What am I looking at?

[Bryan Brownlie]

Just want to say hello to everyone here. It's my first post.

By way of introduction, I've been fascinated by the weather for as long as I can remember. I recently moved to Texas and was treated to a tornado warned thunder storm in the spring, which really got my interest up. (I'm a UK national originally.)

I've been working through a variety of on-line meteorology courses to try and get an understanding of the fundamentals of severe weather, you know, storm structure, air parcel movement, studying MetEd, etc. I can now read a SkewT diagram and hodograph, which is a source of great satisfaction to me, lol.

My problem comes in comparing what I know the structure of a super cell is, set against how it looks in the sky. There seems to be a bit of a lack of annotated pictures of super cells on the internet.

Being from the UK originally I started querying supercells in the UK. I understand that they're extremely rare, but I was curious all the same. I came across a few images, and the structure seems kinda ill defined, and I struggled to match what was in my books and what I was looking at.

I was browsing through and I came across an image of an alleged super cell in Ireland of all places. I liked the images because it was kinda messy and marginal, which maybe makes it a great thing to ask about.

I was reading the guys analysis of what he saw, and his pictures and I wanted to know if you guys can shed any light on what's going on.

Now I'm not saying its not a supercell, just I need some help figuring out the structure and how this would work, and I'm not 100% sure what I'm looking at.

Storms like this interest me. Obviously on the plains, and a fair distance away it's quite easy to see a recognizable structure that kinda matches what you'd expect. What I'm struggling with is instances like this, where you look up and see stuff up close in marginal situations, where the structure isn't that clear and you have to try and identify it.

Can anyone tell me what I'm looking at? It looks very shelf cloudy to me.

http://www.nightskyhunter.com/Maghera Mesocyclone - August 1st 2008 - Page 1.html

There are 2 pages in all!

I'd like to hear some second opinions on this one! As a newbie I'd love to be able to analyze pictures like those myself!

Thanks!

Bryan.

 

[Keith Mullen]

Not bad

I didn't get to watch the video (as work prohibits that), but all in all from a quick glance at the images, it looks (to me) like a smaller-scale classic sup, that's cycling.

I personally think the author did a fair job of annoting what was occurring - though if you're learning - I wouldn't use this as a case study.

 

[jeremy wilson]

Looks like a low based supe to me. In the last pic on page one looks like a nce inflow tail getting sucked into the meso.

 

[Bryan Brownlie]

I didn't get to watch the video (as work prohibits that), but all in all from a quick glance at the images, it looks (to me) like a smaller-scale classic sup, that's cycling.

I personally think the author did a fair job of annoting what was occurring - though if you're learning - I wouldn't use this as a case study.

Hey, thanks for the response. Any good places to look for a case study?

 

[Jeff Duda]

www.extremeinstability.com

Just look through the different chases Mike H. has put up there. He's got some outstanding pictures.

 

[Bryan Brownlie]

I also saw a few of his videos. I foresee much ordering from him in my immediate future.

I got a recommendation for Storm Structure 101, and having read the info page it seems to have a lot of what I'm looking for in it!

 

[Keith Mullen]

SS101

It's a great vid. Love it. Hollingshead has some great visual aids on his site & the vid.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Also consider www.theweatherprediction.com

It's a great source for a wide variety of weather topics. They are included in short, easy to follow segments, and there are multiple quizzes you can take to check your understanding.

 

[Bryan Brownlie]

Thanks! I'll check that out too!