Here was a fascinating midday scene: a rotating wall cloud with a suspiciously conical lowering in about the right place, with sunlit scud riding the rapidly wrapping, rather dusty occlusion downdraft around the mesocyclone. The early-afternoon hour’s high sun angle, and lack of intervening anvil, allowed the scud to shine brightly, in strong contrast to the updraft region. A brief tornadic spinup was reported by a different observer during this stage; however, while we can’t rule it out, we couldn’t find it under the lowering from our vantage, and it may have been a superimposed RFD gustnado. A wider view of the supercell, just a minute or so earlier, shows that this was a strongly tilted storm, not very deep, and quite skeletal, yet still vigorous and interesting. The cold, fast nature of the downdraft would ensure a short life for this storm afterward.
2 NNE Byers CO (27 May 19) Looking NW
39.7403, -104.2097Scud-Wrapping Short-Timer
Here was a fascinating midday scene: a rotating wall cloud with a suspiciously conical lowering in about the right place, with sunlit scud riding the rapidly wrapping, rather dusty occlusion downdraft around the mesocyclone. The early-afternoon hour’s high sun angle, and lack of intervening anvil, allowed the scud to shine brightly, in strong contrast to the updraft region. A brief tornadic spinup was reported by a different observer during this stage; however, while we can’t rule it out, we couldn’t find it under the lowering from our vantage, and it may have been a superimposed RFD gustnado. A wider view of the supercell, just a minute or so earlier, shows that this was a strongly tilted storm, not very deep, and quite skeletal, yet still vigorous and interesting. The cold, fast nature of the downdraft would ensure a short life for this storm afterward.
2 NNE Byers CO (27 May 19) Looking NW
39.7403, -104.2097