Small But Amazing British Tornado Caught On Film, Camera

A tornado in South Cumbria, Britain yesterday.  

A rather rare tornado hit South Cumbria, in the northwestern part of England  yesterday, and a lot of people were around to see it.

Luckily, it wasn't that strong, so nobody got hurt and there wasn't much damage.  One witness said it passed over and very close to a pedestrian, but she wasn't hurt.

I love how one person, Terry Megane described the storm in The Bay, which is a radio station covering North Lancashire and South Cumbria.

"The sky and clouds were like watching a film of flower coming into bloom when they speed it up over a few hours," she said.

Meteo Europe says more tornadoes are possible in Britain today.

One motorist caught the South Cumbria on video as it passed very close to his car. Here it is. It's best in the last half of the video:

World "Weather Porn" Stormy Images Emerge Again

A wicked looking storm in Iowa on Sunday.  

Just because it's fun, and there have been plenty of nasty storms worldwide in the past few days, I'll give you a bit of weather porn, as I do occasionally.

Don't worry, for the uninitiated, weather porn is safe for work. It's just images of dramatic or bad storms that's all.

I don't have any photos of the surprise tornado in Worcester,  Massachusetts last evening, so we'll make do with other storms. (Residents had received a tornado warning, but earlier in the day, it seemed doubtful any storms would become that severe in New England)

Click on any of the photos in this post to make them bigger and easier to see.

Lightning lights up an Italian supercell storm.
Photo by Gianluca Prioli.  

The first image in this post, by @NPZChasers, via Twitter, shows a shelf cloud ahead of a severe thunderstorm in Iowa yesterday.  

It looks like a giant whale about to eat the landscape.  No whales actually ate anything in Iowa that I know of, but there were widespread reports of damage in the storms.

The second photograph is an incredible nighttime shot of a supercell thunderstorm at night, lit up by lightning. The photo was taken by Gianluca Prioli in Gabicce Mare, Romagna, Italy.

In this photo from Italy, note the wall cloud (the dark cloud at the bottom of the storm that looks sort of like a fedora.) Wall clouds often, but don't always produce tornadoes. No word on whether a tornado touched down in this storm.  

Lightning in Croatia. Photo by Ivan Rajcic. Add caption

The third image is by Ivan Rajcic, who left his camera lens open as an intense thunderstorm passed through part of Croatia. There was just an incredible amount of lightning with this storm.

Very pretty shot, though, considering the danger involved.

Microbursts: Beautiful, Deadly Thunderstorm Winds (Storm Video!)

Now that we're getting into thunderstorm season, we not only have to worry about tornadoes in the United States, but something called microbursts.

That ball shaped feature below the dark clouds in
this photo is a microburst rapidy heading toward
the ground. whoever was underneat it probably
got incredible winds of over hurricane force.  

You might have heard of them, those awful windstorms in thunderstorms. The name"microburst" sounds innocuous enough, like maybe a small balloon popping.

But microbursts winds in worst case scenarios can reach 150 mph and cause worse damage than many tornadoes.

"Dry microbursts" common in the western United States, happen when rain falls into warm, dry air. The dry air becomes much more dense as it cools, so it sinks really, really fast to the ground, and you get a microburst.

"Wet microbursts" more common in the east, come when the up and down motion in a bad thunderstorm combines with torrential rain and hail dragging air at high speeds to the surface.

Microbursts are especially dangerous to aircraft, because they an slap planes to the ground or cause turbulence that's so bad they crash.

Pictures and videos of microbursts can be gorgeous, especially with today's easy time lapse technology.

Here's one near Chandler, Arizona in 2013. Note how you can see the spot in the clouds from where the violent downdraft comes:




Here's a neat microburst time lapse in 2011, near the Abilene, Texas airport. Note how violently the burst of falling air seems. That's why these are so dangerous for planes:





Finally, here's what it looks like when you get caught in one on the ground.  This is a 2011 wet microburst in Ocean City, New Jersey. Scary!




Finally, here's a pretty dramatic wet microburst I filmed in Shelburne, Vermont in August, 2011. I was in the right place at the right time. Just a mile either way up the road, there was no wind damage. Proves that microbursts are highly local

Hail Of A Time In El Paso, Texas

Yesterday, some thunderstorms with incredible hail blasted through the El Paso, Texas area.

Hail is pretty common in strong thunderstorms this time of year, but this is something. That's not snow or sleet in the neighborhood in the video, below, but hail:

Although there was a lot of hail, most of the individual hail stones weren't big enough to cause much damage.