The commercial TV media beamed other images of this toppled water tower worldwide the day after the Spencer, SD tornado—pictures that instantly became vivid symbols of a small, aging prairie town virtually obliterated in the span of a couple minutes. Still, in the view behind the dramatic scene, there was some intriguing damage analysis and trajectory interpretation to be done. On the left … [Read more...]
F4 Couldn’t Move Gloves
The fire station at Spencer, SD, was anchored to its slab foundation with 1/4-inch bolts, before the tornado's southeast side popped the entire building bodily off the bolts and disintegrated it somewhere in midair. I came to this conclusion because the sill plate was cleanly slipped up past the bolt heads (no washers) all around the foundation, and because large, mostly intact and partially … [Read more...]
Atmospheric Artistry Aloft
This was an extension of the "No Ord-inary Sunset" scene into the sky straight overhead, a few minutes later, quite mesmerizing to behold. The last minutes of sunshine illuminated most (but not all) of a complex, richly textured cloud extension thrusting westward from the backside of a thunderstorm cluster. Various elements in this peculiar protuberance moved different directions, rolling and … [Read more...]
Overhead Expulsion
As the last sunlight reddened and brilliantly illuminated its midsection, the richly colored and textured, upper-level cloud protuberance continued to thrust westward and directly overhead from a cluster of convection. Gaps allowed blue-sky light to pass through, rendering a marvelously three-dimensional view for a two-dimensional photograph. In its form, this narrowly focused, backshear … [Read more...]
Pall-Bearing Storm
What are the odds? For the second time in three years, an uncommon August supercell in central Oklahoma was visible...from the same spot. This storm was bigger, wetter, messier, and more severe, surfing its own outflow, with the main mesocyclone behind the gust front, but still, no less photogenic in its own way. About the time of this photo, with a clue in the turquoise coloration of the … [Read more...]
Cryptic Left Mover
On the way from intercepting the Faith HP hail machine toward intercepting another right-moving hail producer near Rapid City, my own course got intercepted. This storm formed to the south of the most direct route, evolved into a left-moving, elongated, anticyclonic supercell, and traveled northeastward across the best course. It also produced a large area of outflow that crippled, but did not … [Read more...]
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