Who's itching for spring season already?

[Marko Korosec]

It would be awesome to see the whole footage, I also googled for it but didn't find anything. Mike H, where did you get it and is there a chance to see it?

 

[David Drummond]

I went and dug up a little vintage tornado program some of you younger folks around here might enjoy watching (and some of you older folks that actually have memories of this event).

This is from the infamous "Terrible Tuesday" Red River outbreak that happened on April 10, 1979 which was one considered the worst modern tornado disaster until OKC was hit in 1999.

A program was made 5 years later about it...you can view it here:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/wxevents/19790410/media/terribletuesday.wmv

There is a familiar face to many of us in there, albiet much younger.

If your really in to it, you can listen to the Storm Spotter traffic. An audio recording 74 minutes long. Many of these spotters are silent key now (passed away).
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/wxevents/19790410/media/skywarnradionet.wma

My cousin, Dale Cheek NY5B (then WB5WJX) can be heard in that. Although I was only 12 at the time, I remember the event well. Their house was missed by only blocks away in Wichita Falls, TX. While I had always liked weather, that event was the primary factor in leading to my eventual storm chasing.

The tornado that day that hit Wichta Falls killed 42 people, over half of which were killed in their cars trying to flee the tornado. The tornado was on the ground for 47 miles.

Much data on the event has been retained and makes for some decent study material...most of it is available here:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/wxevents/19790410/

Anyway, I thought some of you itching for the new season might enjoy a stroll back in time....

 

[afischer]

There is another segment from some spotters very close to it from the west side. I think their segment was just before the farmer's. It was a pretty violent wedge with this crazy white meso from hell surrounding it. Even the back side of the meso showed this amazing bowl shape right into the tornado. Towards the end of this part that white meso is almost on the ground. It is just sick.

I have some crappy video captures of the news segment Omaha did using that spotter footage. Stuck these on this link temporarily. Sick is a good way to describe it. http://www.tornadohead.com/columbus98.htm

 

[Marko Korosec]

Allow me to post these two video screen captures of that monster tornado...



This structure is just way too insane to me, not sure exactly what is that. That comes at 1:35 in the video like I mentioned earlier.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Thanks for posting those links, David. I believe the Terrible Tuesday segment is on the end of one of my tornado project videos, Secrets of the Tornado, or something like that.

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

You probably meant this video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzL5GG34X4I. That is just insane video and definatelly one of the most impressive videos I've ever seen, just look for those few seconds part that starts at 1:35!

My SDS got a slgt improvement again, I guess it would be better not to watch such videos, lol.

Looks like that is German language version of Tornado Hunters.

 

[Marcus Opitz]

I am chomping at the bit for this spring as I missed out last year due to me working in Florida 6-7 days a week for the last year and a half. I have lots of money and the entire spring at my disposal and will not be burdened by a job or school. For the first time and maybe the last time in my life, I will be able to devote 2-3 solid months. I just need to fix my old car as I do not wish to subject the 2 year old Lexus I recently bought to the Carnage I wish to encounter. I say bring it on.

 

[Caleb Kimbrough]

I'm sick of the snow.

Spring needs to hurry up.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

I'm not so sure those are actually vorticies. They kind of just look like cloud tags hanging down off the back end of the wall cloud/meso that were being wrapped around the tornado. The entire meso was literally scraping the ground, so there were several points where low cloud tags were hanging down close to the ground and rotating around the tornado, this just appears to be one of the more interesting instances.

 

[Dan Cook]

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/model/displayMod.php?var=gfs_sfc_mslp&hours=hr144hr156hr168hr180

That setup would be sweet if it was May.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/model/displayMod.php?var=gfs_sfc_mslp&hours=hr144hr156hr168hr180

That setup would be sweet if it was May.

I'm guessing it could still be sweet. The last couple gfs runs seem to be much kinder on the gulf. I hope it slows some and backs west a bit. I plan on having a good drive south to get to the real dews. I don't want to make that drive if it means treesville.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

As for those "vorticies", I'll have to watch the video again later(the full version I have) to be sure, but I don't think they appear to have much of any rotation to them.

Edit: Ok, maybe they do. Well, those exact ones don't seem to have much, but others doing the same thing clearly do. It's like they are just being pulled down from the north side of the updraft base/side and pulled around the tornado, acting like multiple vorticies several times. One thing is for sure, it is doing that over there for a long time on the full video, just never as dramatic looking as the captured scene here...but other cases look to rotate more clearly than the "cloud streets" looking examples.

 

[afischer]

I'm guessing it could still be sweet. The last couple gfs runs seem to be much kinder on the gulf. I hope it slows some and backs west a bit. I plan on having a good drive south to get to the real dews. I don't want to make that drive if it means treesville.

The long range models definitely have my attention too. The 00Z Euro and 12Z GFS agree remarkably on the position of this upper trough at 00Z Saturday. The GFS then ejects it negative tilt into the OH Valley by 00Z Sunday... with 50s Td's and 500-1000j/kg CAPE due to the cold mid-level system. A pretty nice forecast for February. How much snow is on the ground in IL/IN now? The western gulf will have a few days to slowly modify, too.. starting Monday with the approach of the first longwave trough. Of course, the devil's in the details, and this will all undoubtedly change. I'm just loving the pattern change. Let the snow eating commence.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

I am not sure what "cloud tags" are, but if you look at the video, you can see that they have rotation in them, unless that's an optical illusion. Then following that a larger, more substantial tornado-like vortex emerges in the place of the small four vortical bands. It's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be rotation in the small scale structures in such a strongly rotational environment. Also, there are a few other clear instances of small-scale vortices elsewhere in that video, which I hope others are also seeing. Anyway, I'm not sure I see the benign, nonrotational character of the bands in question, nor would one expect such behavior in a local environment of extreme vorticity. Can you provide more evidence to support your hypothesis? Edit: I should mention I have an open mind on it, but I'm having a hard time not seeing small scale vortices. Also, what physical mechanism would lead to such banding (alternating cloud tubes?) Vortex sheet breakdown is one possibility, or some kind of vortex instability??

I saw the areas where multivortex action was revealed, but in those particular bands, I did not see rotation. I see them being pulled around by the rotation of the tornado/meso, but I don't see rotation in them individually, if that makes sense. They don't appear to be rotating, or rotating around themselves as vorticies might be expected to, but are instead just being pulled around the tornado.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

The long range models definitely have my attention too. The 00Z Euro and 12Z GFS agree remarkably on the position of this upper trough at 00Z Saturday. The GFS then ejects it negative tilt into the OH Valley by 00Z Sunday... with 50s Td's and 500-1000j/kg CAPE due to the cold mid-level system. A pretty nice forecast for February. How much snow is on the ground in IL/IN now? The western gulf will have a few days to slowly modify, too.. starting Monday with the approach of the first longwave trough. Of course, the devil's in the details, and this will all undoubtedly change. I'm just loving the pattern change. Let the snow eating commence.

To answer your question.. most of central IL and Indiana has a foot or so. South of Interstate 70 is mostly snow free I think. My particular location in eastern Illinois (along with spotty locations in the central part) have almost 20 inches on the ground though, so it's going to be some time before it's all melted and we start seeing really warm temperatures. It is supposed to start warming up slightly here in the near future (at least no more sub-zero temperatures) so maybe we can start putting a dent in it. Otherwise I certainly won't begin even thinking about thunder in these parts yet.

I'm pretty sure there's a place where you can find a map of snow cover across the US, but I couldn't tell you where to find it. Maybe someone else knows?