| What
made this day interesting is that I witnessed first-hand that garden-variety
storms can develop strong rotation in a short matter of time. Typcial
early summer convection developed this afternoon and produced some gusty
winds and heavy rains...but I never heard any thunder at my location.
That's one thing I remember being very strange about today. Today's
storm of interest developed on the heels of a larger cell shown in the
second photo. I recall having seen a compact updraft base to my NW
that quickly developed an ominous lowering. The trees were blocking
most of the detail, so I ran about a quater-mile out into the corn field
to get a better view of this feature. Somewhat in disbelief, I saw
a wall cloud showing off STRONG rotation maybe 2mi to my north! There
could have easily been a tornado with this, but I would have never seen
it given the treeline blocking the view below the wall cloud. Thank
goodness I took a vertical shot showing the updraft, else this just looks
like another shelf cloud.
The
wall cloud remained intact for maybe 10min before becoming shrouded in
rain off to my NE. Oddly, I never saw an anvil with this cell and
that really pushed me to start thinking outside the storm structure and
behavior box. In hindsight, this latter cell must have tracked along
the first storm's outflow boundary and encountered some rich helicity to
feed off. I just wish I had a camcorder at the time to document the
rotation...it was so frigg'n compact and intense! |
