Extremely Rare Tornado In Snow. I'll Call It A Snornado

A tornado going over snow-covered ground, and
pulling up snow into its circulation in New
Mexico recently. This is an extremely rare,
if not unprecedented event I'm not aware
of any other tornadoes on snow. Photo by
Lydell Rafael, via Twitter.

Earlier this month, a relatively weak tornado touched down in New Mexico.

Tornadoes aren't super rare in New Mexico, but this one was really out-of-this world unusual. It was the first one I've ever heard of that moved over snow-covered ground. A lot of other weather weenies have said the same.

There was a pocket of very unusually cold air over New Mexico, part of this month's storminess that has brought feet of snow to some mountainous areas of the West and brought snow to oddly low elevations. It has even snowed a couple times on the Las Vegas Strip this month.

Pockets of cold air above the Earth, like the one in New Mexico, usually produce convection - that is towering clouds that form into thunderstorms, or at least very heavy showers of rain or snow.

This cold air aloft touched off snow squalls in New Mexico.  The air was so unstable, though, that it managed to produce a tornado.

Tornadoes are extremely rare on snow covered terrain because the cold snow almost always stabilizes the air in the lowest layers of the atmosphere near the ground. That is supposed to  cut off the ability for any columns of rotating air to actually touch down. Not this time.

The recent New Mexico storm was a landspout tornado, which is usually weaker than the traditional big Midwest tornadoes. A landspout is certainly one form of tornado, but there's a difference. Weather.com offers this definition describing the difference between a landspout and other tornadoes:

"A tornado is spawned from a parent thunderstorm with a rotating updraft, but a landspout isn't. A landspout requires a towering cumulus cloud to be present over a boundary of converging winds near the surface."

The New Mexico snow tornado was an odd duck of a landspout, meteorologist Bryon Morton, a meteorologist at television station KOAT Alburquerque explained on Twitter:

"This is not a traditional tornado. It's formed by colliding outflows from convective snow squalls that result in a spin up near the surface, whch is transported upward via an updraft. There are no rotating wall clouds or mesocyclones involved. Spectacular & rare nonetheless!"

By the way, a mesocyclone is an area of rotating winds in a supercell thunderstorm. Mesocyclones often, but don't always produce tornadoes.

I have not seen any reports of damage from this snow tornado (snornado?) near Tinian, New Mexico. But it sure was something!

Idaho Was Strange Place For Tornado-Warned Supercell Storm On Saturday

A tornadic supercell thunderstorm approaches Idaho Falls,
Idaho Saturday. Photo by Scott Tomlinson.

Supercell thunderstorms and tornado threats are very common acrosss the Midwest and South this time of year.

But Idaho?

Tornado warnings did go up in southeastern Idaho Saturday as a powerful rotating supercell blossomed there.

Ultimately, there were no immediate reports of a tornado touch down, but people did spot funnel clouds. And there was a lot of damage from wind and hail. Some of the hail was almost as big as tennis balls.

Perhaps the strangest and saddest effect of the storm was the fact that about 50 geese fell from the sky in Idaho Falls, apparently killed in the air by lightning bolts.

Wind gusted as high as 70 mph in the storm.

Hail damage Saturday to siding in Idaho Falls,
Idaho on Saturday. 

If necessary, the National Weather Service in Pocatello, Idaho will investigate whether any tornadoes touched down with this storm.

If you thought Idaho isn't the place that gets a lot of tornadoes, you're right. Tornadoes are relatively rare in Idaho, and certainly very out of the ordinary this early in the season. Idaho averages three tornadoes per year, and they're almost always quite weak.

Since 1950, only eight people have been injured by Idaho tornadoes and nobody has died. (That injury/death statistic from tornadoes is almost exactly the same for Vermont tornadoes since 1950)

Three tornadoes a year seems sort of big, but you have to remember what a huge area Idaho covers. Idaho is the nation's 14th largest state, covering about 85,000 square miles.

To give you an idea of how topsy-turvy the weather was on Saturday, we know that tornadoes are common in Oklahoma this time of year. There were certainly no tornadoes in Okie Saturday, but tehre was freezing rain - very rare for April - in parts of Oklahoma early Saturday morning.

Here's a video of a guy in Idaho who went out into the hail when it was still small, but got a bit stunned when the hail suddenly got big and intensified. You bet, he said Ouch:

Weird Tulsa Tornado, And Tropical Storm Franklin Threatens Mexico

A TGI Fridays in Tulsa, Oklahoma was torn apart
by a rare August tornado Sunday morning. Photo
by Tom Gilbert/Tulsa World

Over the weekend, a tornado struck Tulsa, Oklahoma, causing somewhere between 13 and 26 injuries - depending on who you talk to - and causing extensive damage to a business district. Even a 20 story building suffered serious damage.

When we think of Oklahoma, we think of tornadoes, so at first glance, news of a twister in the Sooner State doesn't seem that out of the ordinary.

This tornado was an oddball, though. Tornadoes are common in and around Oklahoma in the spring, say March through May, as atmospheric conditions favor such storms that time of year.

Those proper conditions are usually missing by August. Oh sure, a tornado can happen pretty much anywhere and any time of day in August, including in Oklahoma, but this was rare. It was the first Tulsa area tornado to strike in August since 1958. 

The time of day it struck was weird, too. Again, tornadoes can happen at any  hour of the day, but they are far more likely to strike in the afternoon and early evening, when the sun's heat adds instability to the atmosphere. That instability can make tornadoes more likely.

The Tulsa tornado, however, swept through at around 1:30 a.m. Sunday. The early morning tornado mostly hit a business district, and most of the stores and restaurants in that area were closed and empty at the time of the tornado.

(Although some people inside a TGI Fridays were hurt when the tornado partly collapsed the building.)

Had the tornado focused on a dense residential district, it might have actually been worse, because people are sleeping at 1:30 in the morning and aren't awake to hear tornado warnings. And Oklahomans generally let their guard down a little after the spring tornado season ends.

And had that tornado struck during the day, when the business district was very busy, it would have been a much worse situation.

The tornado spun up extremely suddenly, catching forecasters a bit off guard. No tornado sirens in Tulsa sounded because by the twister appeared, it was already heading out of town and into the neighboring community of Broken Bow, which did receive warnings.

TROPICAL STORM FRANKLIN

The latest tropical storm to form came to life last night in the northwestern Caribbean Sea.

Its name is Franklin. Top sustained winds this morning were 45 mph, which isn't too big a deal, but forecasters think Franklin could strengthen. The government of Mexico has issued a hurricane watch for the Yucatan peninsula, as the storm is expected to hit there.

It'll weaken briefly while over the Yucatan, but could strengthen again once it gets over the warm waters of the Bay of Campeche on Mexico's easrt coast.

Franklin does not appear to be much of a threat to the United States at the moment.

We Actually Managed To Get Tropical Storm Arlene Out In The Atlantic

The swirls clouds in the center of this satellite photo of a
lot of clouds in the North Atlantic is Tropical Storm Arlene,
which was expected to get absorbed into the rest of the
clouds and dissipate later Friday. 

The other day, I told you about a subtropical storm trying to get going way out in the Atlantic Ocean.

It did, and did something I told you was highly unlikely: It turned into a pure tropical storm.

Yep, Tropical Storm Arlene was spinning way out in the Atlantic Ocean early Friday morning, way northwest of the Azores and way northeast of Bermuda.  It had sustained winds of 50 mph.

It joins Ana in 2003 as the only tropical storms known to have formed in the Atlantic in April.

Arlene is also the furthest north a tropical storm was found in the Atlantic this early in the season.

That doesn't mean it never happened before. Arlene was a tiny little thing embedded in a big area of storminess in the North Atlantic.

Before, say, 1970, when satellites really started taking pictures of the Earth's clouds from above, little tropical storms like this would almost surely have gone undetected.

Who knows? There might have been many April tropical storms that we never knew about.

Subtropical storms, as I mentioned the other day, are hybrids between storms with warm cores, and regular storms, that have cold upper level cores along with cold and warm fronts.

Arlene managed to transition to a warm core storm, but a lame one.

That's because it's core is indeed warmer than its surroundings, but its surroundings are cold. Water temperatures beneath Arlene are a little under 70 degrees. Usually you need water temperatures several degrees warmer than that at least to sustain a tropical storm. '

In any event, Arlene will get sucked up into the other storminess around it today and cease to exist. It poses no threat to any land areas.

Rare April Subtropical Storm Might Be Forming In Atlantic Ocean

A rare - for this time of year anyway - subtropical storm might be forming way out over the Atlantic Ocean today. 

This swirl of clouds way out over the Atlantic Ocean
could become a subtropical storm today. If it does,
it would be named Arlene.

Subtropical storms are hybrids between pure tropical storms and hurricanes, which have warm cores.

Most other kinds of storms have cold air at their cores, and have cold and warm fronts attached to them. 

Subtropical storms have elements of regular storms, such as a cold pocket of air within them. 

However, like tropical storms, subtropical storms have no cold or warm fronts, and thunderstorms spinning around an often cloud-free center. 

Subtropical storms are given names, just like tropical storms, and would show up on a list of any year's tropical storms or hurricanes if they form. 

Tropical or subtropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean are very rare in April, when ocean tempeatures tend to be coolest. Most of these storms need warm water to survive. 

The last time there was an Atlantic subtropical storm was Ana in 1993.

The possible subtropical storm now is forming way out there in an expanse of ocean between Bermuda and the Azores. The National Hurricane Center gives it a 70 percent chance of becoming a subtropical storm. 

If it does form, it will be named Arlene. 

Deciding whether a storm like this one is subtropical or not is pretty subjective. I've seen some pretty spirited arguments on Twitter today from weather geeks as to whether this one qualifies or not. 

If it's decided a subtropical storm forms today, it won't last long. Forecasters expect it to be swallowed up by a larger regular storm on Thursday. 

Subtropical storms can grow and change into purely tropical storms, with totally warm cores and no cold air anywhere near them. 

The only time this has been known to happen was with the already-mentioned Ana in 1993. 

If a subtropical storm forms today, it is very unlikely to become purely tropical. 

Utah Hit Be Tornado, Severe Storms

Damage from Thursday's tornado in Washington Terrace, Utah.
Photo by Patrick Benadict  

That was quite a cold front that went through Utah Thursday, spinning off at least one tornado and causing other damage.

In Washington Terrace, Utah, the tornado destroyed one home, damaged at least 30 others and caused several relatively minor injuries, says the Salt Lake Tribune.

A second, smaller tornado hit the town of Panguitch, Utah, the second time in less than a month that town had a twister, says the Salt Lake Tribune.

Utah isn't exactly the tornado capital of the world, but they do occasionally get them. (Almost every place in the United States could get a twister). A tornado famously tore through downtown Salt Lake City in 1999.

Utah averages about two tornadoes per year, most of them weak, says the Deseret News. On average a tornado as strong as an EF2, with winds of 111 to 135 mph, occurs only once in seven years. Thursday's tornado in Washington Terrace, Utah appears to have caused at least EF2-scale damage.

Thursday's storms in Utah also produced strong, damaging winds, as you'll see in one of the videos at the bottom of this post.

The severe weather is gone from Utah today, but in the chilly air behind the cold front, there's a winter weather advisory in the Wasatch Mountains. Six to 12 inches of snow is likely at elevations higher than 7,000 feet, says the National Weather Service

Winter is coning

Here's a video of yesterday's tornado in Utah:




And here's a video of a LOT of tree damage in Utah from the storm:

Wow! Extremely Rare January Hurricane Alex in Atlantic, Equally Rare Hurricane In The Pacific

Hurricane Alex in the eastern
Atlantic Ocean Thursday morning.
A hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean in
January is almost unheard of.

UPDATE:

Incredibly, Subtropical Storm Alex, already an extreme Atlantic Ocean rarity for January, stremgthened overnight into a full fledged hurricane.

Maximum sustained winds were 85 mph.

Hurricane warnings are up for many islands in the Azores.

On satellite images, Alex has really taken on the look of a full-fledged hurricane, with a well-defined eye and a thick towering eyewall of intense thunderstorms surrounding it.

Alex is the first hurricane to form in the Atlantic Ocean since 1938 and the first hurricane to be in the Atlantic since Alice in 1955

(Alice formed in December, 1954 and survived into the first few days of 1955.)

I'm also not aware of a hurricane coming onshore, or at least causing hurricane force winds, as it might in the Azores.

Now, this January, we had, as far as anybody can tell, the completely unprecedented situation of a hurricane in both the Atlantic and central Pacific during the month of January - and during the same week as well!

Alex is over water that is slightly cooler than what a hurricane can normally sustain, but it's winter, not summer, so the upper atmosphere is much colder than it would be during the traditional hurricane season. This increased contrast might have allowed the storm to form into a hurricane.

After Alex gets done with the Azores, it will convert back into a more "normal" non tropical storm, and be powerful as it makes a beeline toward the southern tip of Greenland.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

Talk about getting the Atlantic hurricane season off to an early start!

Today, Subtropical Storm Alex formed in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. A subtropical storm is basically a tropical storm, but still has a few characteristics of a regular old storm.

But still,  any kind of tropical storm forming in the Atlantic Ocean in January is incredibly rare. Hurricane season starts June 1, and it's very, very, VERY odd for a tropical or subtropical storm to form before May, let alone in January.

In fact, this is the first January subtropical or tropical storm to form in the Atlantic since 1978.

Subtropical Storm Alex in the eastern Atlantic
Ocean Wednesday. It later strengthened, incredibly
into a hurricane, an extreme rarity in January 

Only four have been known to have formed in January since 1851, but there might have been others that were missed in the pre-satellite era.

The average date for the first tropical system of the season in the Atlantic Ocean is July 9, certainly not January 13.

As I noted a few days ago, forecasters have been watching this thing, which started out as a plain old wintertime storm near Bermuda, then drifted over warmer central and eastern Atlantic waters, where Alex took on tropical characteristics.

What helped was the water out there is even warmer than it normally is this time of year.

Alex is expected to move toward the Azores, and also move over colder waters. That will make it turn back into a regular old winter storm that could lash those islands with gusts to gale force around Friday or so.

It will then race off toward Greenland, or east of Greenland, as that aformentioned winter storm.

I don't think Alex has any bearing on how the "real" Atlantic hurricane season will turn out. I don't know if it will be a rough one or not. But if Atlantic waters remain warmer than normal through next fall, and El Nino fades by summer, it could be a busy season.

We'll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, also as noted the other day, there's a hurricane in the central Pacific Ocean, again very much a rarity in January.

Hurricane Pali reached Category 2 status Tuesday with highest sustained winds of 100 mph.  It has set records for the earliest tropical system and hurricane to form in the central Pacific on record, notes the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

As in the Atlantic, hurricanes don't normally form in the central Pacific until summer.

Pali is also setting records for being so close to the equator. Hurricanes, or any kind of storm for that matter, usually form pretty far north of the equator.

The earth spins faster at the equator than it does the more you go toward the North or South poles, because the Earth is widest at the equator.  This is called the Coriolis Effect and helps give storms the spin they need to maintain themselves.

The closer you are to the equator, the less spin a storm can stir up, so any kind of storm system is rare there.

It's actually possible that Pali might cross the equator, because its winds still have enough momentum now to get past the equator. If it does get into the Southern Hemisphere, it will quickly die out, because storms rotate in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere.

So, the Southern Hemisphere flow would work in opposition to Pali's winds, and would quickly fall apart.

In any event, that tropical systems would develop during January in both the Pacific and Atlantic is something pretty much unheard of. Dr. Jeff Masters in his blog said this might not have been possible 30 years ago, when oceans were a bit cooler. Global warming has heated the waters up some.

Although we can't prove global warming created these two hurricanes, it's plausible that they were encouraged by climate change.

It probably didn't hurt that El Nino, Made Pali in particularly able to form in the Pacific Ocean

Still, all these tropical systems in January are very, very weird indeed.

El Nino Makes Barren Chilean Desert Bloom Gorgeously

The Atacama Desert in Chili is normally one of the most desolate places on Earth.

It's on the east side of the Andes mountains, and is pretty much blocked from any moisture that wants to sneak in from the Pacific Ocean.

Moisture from places like the Amazon, and the Atlantic Ocean way, way, way off to the east are also blocke by moisture.

So the Atacama desert is barren. It's one of the driest places on Earth. In many places in this desert, you can go years without measureable rain. There are actually little sections of this desert where it hasn't rained in 400 years! 

However, during a very strong El Nino, the kind we are having now, the ocean on the Chilean coastt warms, which encourages particularly strong storms to form near that Chilean coast.

The strong storms then allow some moisture to force its way over the mountains into the Atacama desert, and it will rain a little in parts of what looks like a wasteland.

Then a miracle happens. According to the Bored Panda web site this is what happens in those rare occasions when it rains:

"The flowers 'hibernating' beneath its surface suddenly bloom with an explosion of color, eager to take advantage of the rain.'

The Atacama desert then turns into a flowery psychelic paradise, as the photos in this post from Bored Panda indicate. (Click on the pics to make them bigger and easier to enjoy.)

Daniel Diaz, the National Tourism Service director in Atacama said in 2015, this bloom has happened twice in the same year, whih has never been seen in recorded history.

I'll just enjoy the photos of the flowers, and for once in my life, I'll wish I was in the Atacama desert.

(Somewhat) Rare December Tornadoes in Southern Plains Sunday

Small tornado in Oklahoma Sunday. Photo via
Twitter by @wxmstr24  

The same storm system that produced a somewhat rare tornado in Los Angeles Friday stayed true to form and produced somewhat rare, for December anyway, in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Those two states are routinely hammered by tornadoes in the spring and early summer.

But in December, tornadoes there are infrequent. Of course, tornadoes are fairly uncommon in the entire nation during the Christmas season anyway, but they do happen.

A tornado near Harper, Kansas Sunday marked only the eight time a twister has been seen anywhere in Kansas during December since 1950.

Television station KAKE reported no damage or injuries from the Harper tornado. It was the first December tornado to touch down in Kansas in 12 years.

Tornado sirens went off in the Oklahoma City metro area at one point Sunday, but nothing touched down in the city, though there was  a weak tornado on the ground briefly in northeastern Oklahoma.

The storm system is unlikely to spawn more tornadoes, but is spreading dangerous winter weather in the form of snow, sleet and freezing rain in the Dakotas, parts of Nebraska and in Minnesota.

Here's a video of the menacing looking Harper, Kansas, tornado:

Rare Tornado Hits Longview, Washington (Photo, Video)

Damage from a tornado that hit
Longview, Washington today.  

New England wasn't the only place in the nation having stormy weather today.

The town of Longview, Washington was hit by a rare tornado today. It ripped roofs off buildings, toppled trees and power lines  and scared quite a few people, but luckily nobody got hurt.

Television station KOMO said the tornado was on the ground along a path of up to a mile in Longview and Kelso. The two communities are in southwestern, near the border with Oregon and not far from Portland, Oregon.

National Weather Service meteorologists were on their way to Longview to assess the strength of the storm.

If I had to guess based on video of the twister, I'd say it was a low end EF1, meaning it had winds of 86 to 110 mph, probably closer to 86 mph. We'll see what the experts say.

Washington State averages two tornadoes a year.

This is the second time this month the state has had a tornado scare.

Tornado warnings went up in parts of the Seattle area on October 11 when a waterspout touched down off Anderson island. The waterspout never made it to shore and there were no injuries and little if any damage with that storm.

Here's a video of the Longview tornado as it blew right across the street from the person taking the video. A voice heard in the video says they shouldn't be near windows. They were right, but in this case, the people near the windows didn't have to contend with shattering glass.

"Undulatus Asperatus" Clouds Help Create Fascinating Video

Undulatus Asperatus clouds over Cedar Rapids, Iowa
a few years ago. The clouds look very scary
but do not cause severe weather.  

"Undulatus Asperatus" sounds like the name of a horrible, rare, disease, doesn't it?

But it's a fairly rare type of cloud. It actually wasn't identified as a type of cloud until 2009. (Unlike the clouds we've long been familiar with. You know, cumulus, cirrus, that type of thing.)

Undulatus Asperatus clouds look dark and menacing as they move across the sky. They make it look like the Worst. Storm. Ever. is coming.

The name of the cloud roughly means "very turbulent, violent form of undulation," says National Geographic, which makes the cloud seem ever more scary.

But these clouds don't signal dangerous weather. They seem to be most often seen across the Great Plains of the United States. They usually appear in the morning or midday near weakening thunderstorms.

Undulatus Asperatus clouds have never been known to cause severe weather.

A video that's gone viral in the past week or so shows a time lapse of Undulatus Asperatus clouds over Lincoln, Nebraska in July.  They look otherwordly, and probably scared a few Nebraskans.

But the video is mesmerizing. Watch:

Very Rare "Heat Bursts" Cook Parts Of South Dakota Overnight

A graph illustrates a 2008 heat burst in
Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Note the abrupt temperature
rise (in red) and sharp drop in humidity (in blue) 

A rare weather phenomenon surely had people scratching their heads overnight in parts of South Dakota.

The communities of Chamberlain and Huron, and I'm sure other South Dakota towns experienced an overnight heat burst.

Between about 3 and 4 a.m. local time, the temperature in Huron rose abruptly from 73 to 91 degrees, before dropping back to 74 degrees an hour later. Chamberlain had a similar, brief heat wave at about 2 a.m. local time.

So how the heck does it suddenly get so hot in the middle of the night?

Blame some big thunderstorms north of the two South Dakota towns overnight.

Many strong storms have big downdrafts. Those are the big gusts of wind you often see as a thunderstorm approaches. These gusts are very common in storms.  Precipitation in the storm cools the air. Cool air sinks, so you get that burst of air. That's why the wind from a thunderstorm almost always feels cool.

But a special set of circumstances involving the downdrafts cause heat bursts. They originate high up in the storm and start out as the precipitation cooling the air, and sinking. But if the upper atmosphere is very dry, the rain evaporates completely on the way down.

With the rain gone, the downdraft is still on it's way toward the surface. But with no rain to cool the downdraft, compression causes the air to heat up. Normally, when the air heats up, it stops sinking, since warm air tends to rise.

But if the original downdraft was extremely strong and had a lot of momentum,  the downdraft, now heating up dramatically, hits the surface. Hence the kind of heat burst you got in Huron, South Dakota last night.

Since the upper air was very dry, the heat burst is dry. In Huron before the heat burst, it was a very muggy night. During the heat burst, the mugginess disappeared in an instant, and it felt more like desert heat.

Heat bursts usually don't last long and temperatures quickly return to close to where they were before the burst started.

There have been heat bursts more extreme than those in South Dakota last night, according to weather historian Christopher Burt.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota early in the morning on August 8, 2008, the temperature rose from 73 to 101 degrees within 10 minutes.

Perhaps the worst heat burst in U.S. history hit a small area northwest of Waco, Texas on June 15, 1960, Burt said. The temperature in an intense late night wind gust rose from about 70 degrees to 140 degrees. Cotton fields in the area were carbonized.

Twin Tornadoes Are Rare, But Also Take Many Forms

Yesterday's giant twin tornadoes in Nebraska.  

Last night me, and a lot of other weather watchers, were hyperventilating over those twin tornadoes that wrecked the town of Pilger, Nebraska, killing a five year old kid and injuring several others.  

I, and many others, said they have never seen anything like it: Two strong tornadoes, shoulder to shoulder, roaring across the Plains.

But there have been a few similar incidents over the years.

However, it remains to be seen if there have ever been two tornadoes as strong as the Nebraska ones co-existing a mile or less apart.

The closest thing I could find to yesterday's twister: Twin funnels
Elkhard, Indiana, April, 1965  

The closest thing I could find to yesterday's Nebraska disaster was a tornado in Elkhart, Indiana on April 11, 1965.

The famous photo of the tornado shows two distinct, large, strong funnels. But it's unclear if that is two independent tornadoes, or a one multivortex tornado.  

Multivortex tornadoes are more common than two distinct tornadoes near each other.

Multi-vortex tornadoes are indeed one twister, but they contain mini tornadoes that swirl around inside the main circulation of the funnel.

The mini funnels help explain why you often seen tornado damage in which one house is destroyed while another just feet away has relatively minor damage.

Another example of twin tornadoes.  A view from Yankton, South
Dakota across the Missouri River to Nebraska shows these
two twisters in May, 2007. These storms were weaker than
the ones that hit Nebraska Monday.  

The mini-funnels inside a multi-vortex tornado focus and intensify the wind in small paths within the larger path of the parent tornado.

That's why the damage is so variable in many tornadoes.

In other cases, two tornadoes exist at the same time within one supercell thunderstorm. These giant storms often cycle tornadoes.

One forms, carves a path of destruction, then starts to weaken in favor of a new tornado nearby.

Usually, though, one of the tornadoes is weak, while one is strong. I wonder if yesterday's Nebraska tornadoes set some sort of record for two nearby tornadoes co-existing while maintaining their strength.

This looks like three tornadoes, but it's one multivortex tornado
The funnels are rotating around a main circulation within one twister.  

I'm sure the meteorologists will be studying this one really intensely.

 

 

Media Hog North Dakota Ice Disc Had Vermont Predecessor

The national media has been all over a rare ice disc that formed in the Sheyenne River in North Dakota during a recent cold snap.

This ice disc that recently formed in North Dakota
has gotten a lot of attention recently. Another
nice one formed in Vermont in 2010.  

It's a perfectly symetrical circle of ice slowly rotating in the river. As bits and pieces of river water froze in the cold snap, the ice got caught in an eddy and formed the rare phenomenon.

Ice discs don't form often. They need the perfect combination of the right temperature, the right force of current and a gentle eddy to form.

That combination apparently doesn't happen very often.

As I said, just about every major media outlet has mentioned the North Dakota ice disc. It's such a media hog

A similar ice disc in Vermont got a lot of local attention in 2010, but for some reason didn't become an "A" list celebrity like that one now out there in North Dakota.

But the Vermont disc, recorded along a river in Moscow, Vermont in February, 2010, lives on when you check out YouTube. Here's the (less) famous Vermont ice disc from that winter: