Sunday, May 23, 2010

Large, Wedge Tornado in SD Yesterday

I posted a storm relative velocity image (on Twitter) of a monster storm West of Aberdeen, SD yesterday evening.  I even remarked that a "large" tornado had been reported with that storm.  Well, large it was indeed!  Take a look at this shot, taken by storm chaser Chris Collura near Bowdle, SD yesterday evening:


You can read more about Chris's chasing adventures on his website:  http://sky-chaser.com/

Here is a video of the same tornado, shot by Randy Cooper of SevereStudios.  

Here is a storm relative velocity image from the Aberdeen, SD (KABR) radar after the storm had moved just East of Bowdle.  Note the strong rotation near the bottom center of the purple-colored tornado warning polygon.  (Remember that green and blue colors depict motion toward the radar, while red and orange colors depict motion away from the radar;  the radar is located at the right center portion of the screen).






Here is a reflectivity image of the same storm, taken about an hour earlier.  Note the classic "hook echo" configuration:

Here is what the Aberdeen storm report log looks like (note that the log was sorted by tornado reports first, so it is not necessarily in chronological order):







No comments: