As the significant Canadian tornado slowly narrowed, two scuddy, filamentous funnels in the near upper foreground quickly formed and merged, while orbiting the main mesocyclone from left to right. Within less than 10 seconds, the feature coiled into a distorted rope and vanished. It’s impossible to say if the loop vortex formed a closed toroid inside the cloud aloft, but in such a turbulent, high-shear environment soaked with vorticity, that can’t be ruled out. All manner of swirls and eddies formed and dissipated fast around the rim of the rapidly evolving mesocyclone. I had to keep my head on a swivel for several seconds between shots to guard against being sneak-attacked by any satellite tornado that could develop. Fortunately that didn’t happen, and this remained a safe location from which to observe and photograph the main vortex’s remarkable lifespan.
2 NNE Canadian TX (27 May 15) Looking WNW
35.9443, -100.3707