What did I see today? May 26, 05

[SteveCarter]

Hey everybody. I'm new to this site, so PLEASE tell me if I'm doing something wrong. Won't hurt my feelings. I live in South Carolina, 40 years old male, etc etc etc. Today, while flying from Las Vegas to Atlanta, we flew very close to a SC, rotating and beautiful, with vivid lightning. The only reason I suspect it was rotating, was because the clouds formation were completely rounded all around the exterior of the storm. No ragged edges. I THINK I may have been somewhere between the TX/NM border, to the Tulsa area, but not positive. The time was very close to 11:15AM Vegas time, or 2:15PM Atlanta time. This was really a spectacular sight.

 

[Kevin Bowman]

just because it was rounded dosent mean it was rotating, a better feature would be something similar to barbers poll

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Hi Steve - welcome to the board. I love seeing storms from the air ... caught one of the most beautiful lightning shows I've ever seen coming home from my brother's in NC last year. Really spectacular stuff. Here is a radar grab from noon on the OK/TX border, from Frederick, OK/Altus AFB. Couldn't see any rotation when I pulled up the radial velocity images. Base reflectivity shows a line of thunderstorms in Oklahoma about the time you were flying through. The most intense cell (at only around 50-55dBZ) in the center of the line appears to have a bit of an appendage or comma-shape, so there may have been some imbedded rotation there, but I'm not aware of anything of that nature down there today (of course, someone else may know something I don't). It is also possible that the storms were outflowish or producing a shelf feature on their front side, which often appear rounded as well. Hope this helps -

EDIT: by the way, I pulled up the image from an hour later as well and this line had developed a bow appearance, which really indicates outflow. The crazy thing is that the stinkin appendage on the southern cell (tail end Charlie) was still there an hour later, even looking a bit more defined at that point.

 

[SteveCarter]

Mike, thanks....that was prob it

That would be just about the exact time we would have been there. I had about 90 seconds to watch this storm. Flying at 475 mph, things "fly" by. This could be my imagination, or just wishful thinking, but it did seem to have a funnel on the south side, bit it was WELL up into the clouds, and horizontal, so a funnel? hmmmm.....maybe not, who knows? WHATEVER it was, it was beautiful. Thanks for the radar...it was killing me to see this, and have NO idea what, where, or how!