User talk:MidnightStudios16
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Happy editing! The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 05:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Continuing the Broome tornado discussion[edit]
Hello,
Like I mentioned over in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather I am happy to continue discussion of this tornado. Note that while I am a meteorologist, I don't encounter severe weather in my forecasting at work or in my region so someone may have better answers than me.
Weak cold core tornadoes can occur in strong cold fronts. I like to think of these sort of like eddies and are short lived. Supercells are large structures that are visible on multiple doppler radar elevation scans, often over a prolonged period of time. By contrast, cold core tornadoes (including those of this sort) do not last long and may only be picked up by the lowest radar scan for a frame or two - and that's only if the tornado is close enough to the radar that the beam height does not pass above the rotation. Cold core tornadoes are common where I live in the Pacific Northwest, and almost always these form and die before the radar data makes it to a National Weather Service meteorologist and even if it does many meteorologists in areas without a lot of cold core tornadoes may not issue a warning on weak rotation observed in a single radar scan.
In determining whether damage from a storm is or isn't tornadic, meteorologists (or people trusted by the local NWS office) physically go to the damage site to look for several parameters. One thing they look for is the level of damage produced by the storm to estimate wind speed. To determine whether or not it was a tornado, they look to see what direction the wind direction was. In a tornado, the wind direction varies significantly over short distances (see this explainer for examples of both tornadic and non-tornadic wind damage). If someone provides a video of the storm showing tornadic rotation reaching the ground, that would also lead the NWS to determine it wasn't straight-line winds.
Let me know if this answers your questions and/or if you have more questions. DJ Cane (he/him) (Talk) 00:07, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- I want to reply but I have all of the questions and its proving that I still cannot conceptualize tornado genesis in my mind. They show you pictures of fronts colliding, but I wish they'd show all scales at once, and then variables I have to understand like where the low pressure or where the fronts are located or how wind sheer leads to a vortex... it's all a lot to process and it seems very hard to convey effectively. Or maybe it's just me, but it's frustrating. Seen a thousand twister videos and not once do I see what people see when they say stuff like "Oh there's the RFD" like what are u seeing man???
- Anyway noob rant over. I'm trying to learn but now you gotta throw cold core systems at me. And then you say no supercell and I'm like... okay... so was it just a lot of convection and a lot of sheer or did I butcher that hypothesis? MidnightStudios16 (talk) 03:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- I'm happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability, just with the reminder that I rarely handle severe weather forecasting and haven't been on a severe weather storm chase since 2020. I wouldn't worry too much about trying to conceptualize tornado formation yet, that's a bit like trying to take a calculus course without having the prerequesite lower math courses. You're right that it is difficult to convey tornado formation of any type by text. I also wouldn't be too worried about being able to pick out a RFD or other attribute on a YouTube video. Attending storm spotter courses from a local National Weather Service office could help here (assuming you're in the United States). At any rate, while tornadoes are one of the most extreme examples of meteorology, there's tons of other interesting things going on in the atmosphere.
- That said, there are a lot of diagrams out there to show the attributes of a supercell and what causes them. Rather than relying solely on watching storm chase videos and livestreams, I recommend this NWS powerpoint as a decent starting point. Other resources are also out there. With supercell dynamics, it is important to know that air warms as it is lowered (such as in an RFD) and cools as it is raised.
- Cold core tornadoes generated in non-supercell environments require decent shear, like you mention. Shear is necessary because it generates the rotation. Consider if you were to lock two remote control cars together. If the left car is moving slower than the right, the right will be forced to turn toward the left, pulled that way by the slower vehicle. This rotation is similar to what causes tornadoes to form, it is also similar to what causes a vehicle to spin out when the left tires remain on asphalt but the right tires lose traction on snow. You don't need a supercell for this rotation to occur. It can happen if a weak surface boundary sets up (common with landspout tornadoes), in a gust front that isn't moving the same speed along the entire length (forming gustnadoes), in squall lines, and in frontal environments. The strongest tornadoes are formed by supercells, but not all tornadoes are. All tornado genesis requires rotation, meaning it requires shear of some sort to initialize that rotation. DJ Cane (he/him) (Talk) 15:37, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
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Funcrunch (talk) 21:36, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you, apologies for the inconvenience and possible offense. MidnightStudios16 (talk) 21:38, 6 April 2024 (UTC)