A wide-angle film slide shows a classic Oklahoma tornado moving ENE toward the Cimarron River south of Dover. Note the skirt of scud wrapping into it at cloud base, and the well-defined slot of brightness to its upper right (to its NW). So-called “clear slots” like this—which often are just less cloudy—are common with tornadoes from classic supercells. They evaporate out of the clouds in sinking, drying air of the occlusion downdraft wrapping through the parent mesocyclone. Look closely at the bottom of the visible funnel to see a couple of small strands of cloud material. These were actually subvortices within the tornado, orbiting its circulation center at high speed. Multiple-vortex structures such as this are quite common in tornadoes, even some small ones. They account for the cycloidal (overlapping-coil shaped) scour marks often seen from the air when flying over a fresh tornado track through crops. This tornado soon would begin bathing in indirect sunset light before dissipating to my east.
5 WSW Dover OK (4 Oct 98) Looking SE
35.971, -97.9938