Videos: Summer Storms Are Scary! Watch These For Proof

Aftermath of August 2 Traverse City, Michigan
storm. Video of it is below. Add caption

A few videos I came across this week show how scary heavy rain and severe storms can get in a big hurry.

We go to Yemen, Italy and Michigan to show what a summer storm can do in just a few minutes.

The first one shows serious flooding in Yemen recently, and a young boy got caught in it.

As he was being swept away, the video will show what happened next. Spoiler: It's scary, but ends well.



Next, we go to Italy, for this flash flood that hit in the past week.  The images in the first half of the video are by far the most interesting:



Finally we go to Traverse City, Michigan on August 2, where an incredible storm caused widespread damage in the northern part of that state.

Here, the storm goes on and on, dismantling the trees in a forested neighborhood in Traverse City. It's a wonder the guy and his house weren't completely smushed. By the way, foul language alert in the video, but you'll understand why:

Plains Storms Yield Awesome Time Lapse Weather Porn Videos

Supercell in western South Dakota on Monday.  

Supercell thunderstorms have raked parts of the northern, western and central Plains this week, producing a few tornadoes, lots of giant hail, winds, and flash floods.

More of that kind of weather is due today, especially in eastern Wyoming and Colorado, and much of Nebraska and Kansas.

I'm sure we'll have lots of chasers making lots of great images and videos today, since I think today's storms will be more widespread than they were Monday and Tuesday.

A lot of storm chasers and videographers are employing time lapse video to capture the movement of these rotating supercells to great effect.

Here's some examples of this week's weather:

For starters, here's a  photogenic supercell that almost produced a tornado in western South Dakota on Monday

 

Here's another rotating supercell over Strasburg, North Dakota, which produced damaging winds, baseball sized hail, a flash flood, and maybe a brief tornado:



Now, we have a supercell that blew up southeast of Scottsbluff, Nebraska just before sunset last night. It seems to split in two, but no matter what, it's spectacular.

Are We "Weather Porn" Addicts? And Is That A Bad Thing?

There's nothing inherently wrong with viewing
images like this tornado in Moore, OK, but..... 

Lately, if you really want to create a storm in the meteorological  community, just bring up the term "weather porn."  

And this storm has nothing to do with wind, rain, snow or destruction. But maybe it does have a little to do with hot air.  Or not. You decide.

What precipitated (ha!) this latest kerfuffle among weather geeks was a recent article by David Bauder, a television writer for the Associated Press.

He noted that the evening news, and lots of other news sources are loaded up with weather stories.

This, Bauder seemed to argue, had as much to do with ratings as news value. After all, people are attracted to dramatic images of extreme weather. Weather porn, if you will.

I've always freely admitted that some of what I post on this here weather and climate blog thingy is weather porn.

Hey, I'm just as much a fan of weather porn as the next guy or gal, even as I know I also have a responsibility to offer sober stuff, non-hyped stuff, not sensationalism

I really don't see the harm in weather porn, at least in moderation.

What really drew a negative reaction, and I can see why, is a source for Bauder's story characterized ABC News meteorologist Ginger Zee as a "pornographer."

Here's news consultant Andrew Tyndall, quoted in Bauder's piece:

"If Ginger Zee reported in the role of climatologist rather than meteorologist, I would praise ABC's 'World News Tonight's' decision as a daring intervention into a crucial national and global debate.....Instead, she is more like a pornographer."

I, as a weather geek and journalist, and many outspoken meteorologists, have real problems with Tyndall's quote.

First of all, Ginger Zee has proven herself to be a highly capable, accurate and good meteorologist and journalist.

Also, implicit in the Tyndall quote is an assumption that maybe every news story that even touches on weather ought to be sounding alarms on global warming.

.....when we're done watching the dramatic tornado video,
it's time to help people like this. (Photo by Sue Ogrocki, AP)   

It's true journalists really have a duty to spread as much accurate information on climate change as possible.

But not every news story, not every weather story warrants an exhaustive examination of global warming.

If a storm is an immediate threat, if a tornado, hurricane, flood, blizzard, snow storm, ice storm, cold snap or heat wave is threatening a city, a region or a country, those potentially affected want to know what's up with this particular crisis. And how to protect themselves.

One the storm passes, that would be a good time to examine whether global warming had a role in the disaster or really bad weather.

Additionally, it's a necessary public service when people like Ginger Zee describe for us the implications and hazards of a storm or extreme weather.

That said, it's also true that TV networks and other media outlets love, LOVE showing footage of extreme weather. Frankly so do I.

I openly refer to wild, dramatic videos and photos of tornadoes, hurricanes and the like as "weather porn." People get off on it. I do, too.

Of course, this enthusiasm for "weather porn" gives me some serious pangs of guilt, and should for everyone who enjoys weather porn.

The people who were killed in that storm left behind grieving loved ones. The houses that were destroyed belonged to someone. The lives that were uprooted by the severe weather will never be the same.

I like to think our addiction to weather porn has a good side. That maybe it inspires us to help those who were victimized by dangerous weather. That it makes us lobby for better structural standards, and zoning to keep people from building in hazardous places.

I'd also like to think all these images of severe weather prompts us to become activists against climate change.

That's the hope, anyway.

The power of nature is thrilling, awe-inspiring, deadly, tragic and incredibly vivid.  I will continue to be a fan of weather porn, and I'm sure a lot of other people will, too.  

I just hope we don't sit back and do nothing once we've finished watching that video of an EF-5 tornado destroy a pleasant Great Plains small town.

Another Incredible Australian Storm. This Time, Sidney

Scary storm menaces rush hour traffic in Sydney, Australia
earlier this week. Photo by Mark Evans, or @evohood, via Twitter. 

It's the beginning of summer down in Australia, and it's prime time for severe weather, much like late spring and early summer is here in the United States.

It's been quite a year already for severe storms in Australia. I've already noted the incredible storm that hit Brisbane a couple weeks back.

Now it is Sydney's turn. 

They've been having a series of nasty storms this week, culminating in a super cell that moved over Sydney looking like an alien mother ship in a bad science fiction movie.

Here's a video of the photogenic but scary video approaching Sydney:

Stormscapes Video by Nicolaus Wegner Is Beyond Awesome

An ominous, beautiful wall cloud in a severe storm,
photographed by Nicolaus Wegner.  

Those of you who read this here blog thing know I like weather porn.

So do a lot of other weather geeks. Weather porn is totally safe for work.

It's images and videos of storms and other extreme weather that is thrilling to watch, dramatic to see. It's kind of a rush.

I'm always looking for "weather porn videos" like some sort of creep in a scary adult video parlor in a bad part of town.

Except, since it's innocent enough (No sex! No nudity! No weirdness!) I can be open about it, and can just enjoy this little foible I have. And share it.

I think I found what is maybe the best weather porn video I've ever come across.

It's time lapse videos of storms, tornadoes and other violent weather in Wyoming and surrounding states.

It was put together by Nicolaus Wegner, who, with his wife Daow, run LightAlive photography in Wyoming. 

Nicolaus Wegner captured his wife Daow, confronting
a beautiful, severe storm.  

The video, Stormscapes 2, is meticulously edited to music, and it's just an awesome concert of nature at its most violent and beautiful.

Wegner spent a lot of time driving around Wyoming, South Dakota and nearby other states to capture these big storms.

Just an amazing video to watch. And pop on over to the LightAlive photography web site, because he's got awesome still images of storms and other nature pics.

They do a lot of great portraiture and wedding photography, too, but their nature images are absolutely amazing.

Wegner's weather art are (hint, hint) the perfect Christmas gift for the storm, nature and art lover.

Here's his amazing Stormscapes 2 video. (It's best to watch it in full screen mode):





Stormscapes 2 from Nicolaus Wegner on Vimeo.

Brisbane, Australia Blasted By Incredible Supercell Storm. Wild Photos, Videos

James Marriott in his roofless Brisbane, Australia
apartment after an epic storm moved through. Photo via AP.  

While most of us here in the United States enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast, some with no electricity in the Northeast from a snowstorm, it was a normal workday in Brisbane, Australia.

That is until the worst thunderstorm to hit the city in decades blasted through.

Widespread areas of Brisbane and surrounding towns suffered through 85 mph winds, lots of lemon-sized hail, torrential, flooding rains and a zillion lightning strikes.

Planes at an airport were flipped over and sent skittering across fields. Residents huddled in hallways as roofs flew off and hail smashed windows, allowing more hail, torrential rains and hurricane force winds to blast into their homes.

The videos you can watch at the bottom of this post are outrageous.

This plane was flung across a field during
Brisbane's huge storm Thursday.  

Given the huge number of dangerous hailstones pelted down, the shattering glass in hundreds or even thousands of buildings, the falling debris, the roofs flying off buildings, some of them high rises; the flooding, it's amazing that only 29 people had minor injuries in the city of a little more than 2 million people.

Australian Broadcasting Corp says the city suffered at least $150 million in damage. Power was cut to more than 100,000 customers. Countless cars were totaled by the giant hailstones.

The storms hit just as the afternoon commute was getting under way. That meant there were a lot of cars on the road. Meaning a lot of cars that would get trashed by hail.

The hail and flooding and power failures also pretty much put the kabosh on public transit, so many people had trouble getting home from work to see how badly their houses were trashed.

The videos below are beyond incredible. Watch:

First video shows the incredible intensity of the storm:




Amazing that nobody got hurt in this downtown Brisbane neighborhood, considering what you see happening. Yikes!




Watch the storm invade this guy's apartment in a very scary fashion: The wildest part begins about 1 minute into the video:

Incredible Russian Dash Cam: Guy Tries To Get Back In Garage As Tornado Arrives

Things start to get way too stormy just after
a guy in Russia pulls out of his garage.  

There was a big tornado in Russia about a week and a half ago.

We now have a dash cam view that is probably one of the most remarkable videos I've seen of a tornado.

We see the view through the front windshield as the Russian driver backs out of a garage on a stormy day.

(Note: the time stamp on the video is incorrect. This was in late August)

Just as he pulls out onto the road, chaos erupts. It's a tornado!  Better get back into the garage!!!

Watch below what happens when he tried to do just that.

Spoiler:  Judging from the damage to the car and everything else around toward the end of the video, you wonder how he survived.

This is INCREDIBLE, though. Watch:

Way, Way Too Close To A German, Russian Tornadoes

Believe it or not, this image from a video of
a recent Russian tornado was taken from a safer distance
than in the video in this post, below.  

Two videos emerged this week of tornadoes in Europe in which I think whoever was filming them got far, far too close to the action. It's a wonder they weren't hurt or killed.

In the German tornado, I don't know why this person was out on his patio with the tornado right at the edge of his yard, but there he was as a twister swept through part of Germany.

Luckily the tornado was on the relatively weak side, and only the very outer edges of it actually engulfed the guy who was filming but YIKES!!

Watch:



An even scarier video emerged from Russia in the past couple of days.

Last week, and EF-3 tornado struck, claiming at least two lives.  In this video, I'm afraid right at the beginning it sort of looks the tornado had already gone through and left wreckage. But watch as the tornado comes.

Again wayyyyyyy too close!  Don't try this at home kiddies!!

Here's the Russian storm:

Sunday's Storms In Vermont Created Amazing, Sometimes Rare Clouds

Many thunderstorms, some of them severe, raked Vermont and parts of northern New York Sunday.

A roll cloud precedes a weakening thunderstorm
approaching St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening.  

It was part of a massive severe weather outbreak in the eastern third of the United States that produced damaging tornadoes in Tennessee, Kentucky and elsewhere, wind damage, hail and flooding.

There were 378 reports of severe weather across the nation Sunday, including six tornadoes.

The damage wasn't so widespread here in the North Country, with reports of flash flooding near Plattsburgh, N.Y, one-inch diameter hail in Ferrisburgh, Mendon, Westford and Williston, Vermont, and tree damage in places like Charlotte and Peacham, Vermont.

Outbreaks of summer thunderstorms often create the most interesting clouds imaginable, and Sunday's bout of storms did not disappoint.

I was treated with the rare sight of a well developed roll cloud preceding a non-severe thunderstorm rolling toward my home in St. Albans, Vermont.

The roll cloud in St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening
scrapes against a low hill as it crosses the community.  

Later, the setting sun, lit up some mammatus clouds, a relatively rare sight in the Green Mountain State, and a sign somebody off to my east or northeast was getting a really nasty storm.

I also saw some shelf clouds yesterday, too.

I'd better explain my terminology.

A shelf cloud looks like just that, a low, dark, shelf like feature in the front of a thunderstorm.

When you see a shelf cloud, it's time to take cover, because the parent thunderstorm is probably severe. When the shelf cloud goes overhead, you're likely to get  really nasty burst of strong, damaging winds and maybe some hail.

You'll see just after the middle of a time lapse video a shelf cloud Sunday evening over Malletts Bay, Colchester, Vermont.

Mammatus clouds are lit up by the setting sun
over St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening.  

A roll cloud like the one I saw yesterday looks dramatic and scary to people unfamiliar with them, but they really aren't dangerous at all.  

They're usually caused by a downdraft from a decaying thunderstorm that lifts a bit of warm and humid air from the surface.

The air rises and curls toward the dying thunderstorm, and you get something that resembles maybe a weird, horizontal tornado.

When the roll cloud moved overhead in St. Albans, we had a wind gust to perhaps 20 mph, followed by a brief burst of rain. Nothing scary.

The decaying thunderstorm that caused my roll cloud was ceding energy to a strengthening thunderstorm to my south, near and to the northeast of Burlington, Vermont.

Another view of the mammatus clouds over
St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening.  

That storm complex continued toward the northeast. When it got to near St. Johnsbury, in northeastern Vermont, it had become quite strong and was producing a few damaging wind gusts and probably some hail.

As the sun was setting, it lit up the anvil shaped top of the thunderstorm, way up there maybe at 30,000 feet above sea level.

The anvil top curved back many miles toward the west, as they often do in strong storms. The top of this thunderstorm was easily visible from my house in St. Albans, 50 west of the storm's core.

The anvil top of a thunderstorm consists of moisture that spreads out as its upward momentum dies off.

Developing thunderstorms early Sunday afternoon made
for a pretty sky over Lake Champlain near South Hero, Vermont.  

Sometimes, some of the ice in the air within this anvil starts to sink, giving you those pouches that you see in mammatus clouds.

Mammatus clouds are always connected to thunderstorms, and the thunderstorms they're connected to are often, but not always strong or severe.

But if you see mammatus clouds overhead, like I did Sunday evening, don't worry. Usually, they're on the back side of a storm, which has already gone by.

Of course, days with thunderstorms create more routine, but very pretty and interesting cloud patterns.

It was fun to watch thunderheads bubble up to become storms during the course of the afternoon. They you could see big blasts of rain come out of the storms, then a rainbow to finish it off.

A thunderstorm dumps a heavy load of rain in this
view from Lake Champlain looking toward Colchester
and Burlington, Vermont.  

Very pretty.

Today, there's more storminess in Vermont and New England.

There could be some interesting clouds again amid the possibly strong storms in eastern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

But places more to the west will likely see rain and a dull overcast. Not nearly as interesting as Sunday.

Here's that time lapse, produced by Dan Russell, of thunderstorms in Malletts Bay, Colchester, Vermont to give you another glimpse of Sunday's stormy, changeable and fascinating skies:

Hail Of A Week Across The Nation: Destructive Storms Colorado To Pennsylvania

Even as the sun came out, heavy hail accumulations
caused this crash in Arapahoe County, Colorado Wednesday.  

The number of tornadoes so far in 2014 in the United States is still, thankfully, below normal this year, despite twisters in odd places, like in upstate New York and in Delaware yesterday.

But the hailstorms have been intense. Denver streets were blocked by deep hail Wednesday, and huge hailstones rained down on many communities in the Northeast Thursday.

Between all the damaged or destroyed cars, pockmarked siding and extensive crop damage, I'm sure damage from hail on Thursday alone amounted to many, many millions of dollars.

The hail caused surreal scenes as it shredded leaves and branches from trees, and set off flash floods, since the huge volume of hail quickly melted.

From Twitter, @AshleyReed17 took this surreal
photo of the aftermath of intense hail
in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. 

Strange fogs developed as the sun came out after the storms, as the cold hail steamed into the humid air as it thawed.    

I'm sure auto dealers and auto body shops all over the place will be slammed over the next few months.

Today through the weekend, the threat of big hail will continue in parts of the East Coast and the High Plains, but it doesn't look like the severe storms will be as widespread as they have been over the past week.

The photos are one thing, the videos are another. A lot of hail videos popped up on YouTube, as the very loud destruction from the hail played out in front of residents.










Here's what the storms looked like in Reading, Pennsylvania:



Wyomissing, Pennsylvania was probably the hardest hit. There are gaps in this video with just a green screen but watch through how the intense hail shreds the leaves and branches on trees. The extreme volume of hail causes flash floods as the sun comes back out, and we get a tour of some pretty bad damage:

Amazing "Tree Trunk" Spinning Storm in Wyoming Sunday Is Tops In "Weather Porn"

Severe weather broke out in the High Plains of Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska Sunday.

The rough weather, which included a couple of small tornadoes, hit mostly remote, sparsely populated areas. The exception was Billings, Montana, which got some large hail.

But Sunday's biggest drama was the cloud you see in the photo. It was a spinning supercell in the middle of nowhere, basically, near Clareton, Wyoming.

I got it from Basehunters Chasing, who are storm chasers with a penchant for capturing beautiful, incredible Tornado Alley storms.

This is probably they're best shot yet. Find them: @basehunters via Twitter.

Also, click on their Facebook page for much more. 

The storm didn't produce a tornado, but it is surely one scary cloud. Like an alien mother ship ready to take over the world, or a giant elephant ready to stomp the hell out of us.

Basehunters were also kind enough to take this time lapse video of this supercell storm. Watch this incredible, high quality weather porn:





For good measure, here's a view of Sunday's hail storm in Billings, Montana: