Basic Storm Spotter Training

that's me in 1979 is this creepy or what I've been here a long time for those that are new here I've been on television here literally since the 1970s is that creepy or what and by the way I had no hair back then that was a comb-over good gust of wind would come along and whoop it's all gone but I think I've been here way too long when you start seeing this kind of stuff showing up this is very disturbing okay I mean this is like really disturbing this guy's gonna realize I'm stuck on his body for the rest of his life is that guy in this room here I'm gonna find that guy one day wow that's just you don't have one of those DB man no okay that's good this by the way is the bee man in case you missed it this is what Brian looks like when he goes out storm spotting force in the field my advice don't wear that when you're storm spotting okay because you get some very strange looks and this is what Brian looks like when you send in a bad report to him okay this is why we love spotter training and that Brian does not have to look like that but anyway look on a serious note this is the average annual tornado fatalities per state and we're number one and listen we don't need to be number one if you know much about me I have a burden for those people that have lost their life we all do but it's just gotten out of hand we had 23 people that died in the state this month and that's not excusable for anybody in this room but we have to do something about that but again these numbers are just horrifying a number of tornado deaths by state since 1950 Alabama by far is number one admittedly that was skewed by one day in 2011 April 27th on that day the death toll was 200 in 52 but I thought the death toll that day should have been 30 I'm in the process of memorizing the names of everybody that died that day I want to know their names their stories it's very motivating for me to work to be sure that this doesn't happen again we can't stop all loss of life but we have some work to do this is a map of all of the tornadoes on that day we had 62 we consider this day generational these tend to happen once every 40 years and if you are new to the area this was the event of our generation we had 62 tornadoes and this is the scale this is the EF scale over here every tornado gets a number 0 to 5 fives are extremely rare we had three fives that day two were side-by-side one was over here this is just one of them and by the way here the numbers we had sixty two tornadoes the death toll was 252 and the one thing we learned that day is what we do is not enough physical science we have to learn more about human behavior and social science we have no training in that and the social scientists have really really helped us in recent years in the spotters play an absolutely crucial role in the process we need more of them and I thank you for your time tonight we're gonna honor your time and we promise to get you out quickly let me just say this that this video right here these people are not employees of the TV station this was the Tuscaloosa tornado 40 minutes before it got into the city and by nature of this video and these were two volunteers they provided dashcam video of this large wedge tornado a lot of things kicked in at that time at that point a tornado emergency was declared for Tuscaloosa in Northport and we really ramped it up and I know there are people walking around today because of the servant's hearted these two men John old shoe and Ben Greer oh she worked with me for years he's retired but he's he got no pay for this they were just volunteering so this is an example of what we need and we don't expect everybody in this room to go out with a dash cam and and shoot tornado video but we expect you to help us by good reports when the weather is bad now if you're interested in doing this that's okay but if not we just need your reports this is from two of our spotters they've been trained for 12 years they've been coming to this thing for 12 years this is from John Brown and Mike Wilhelm and again this is the Tuscaloosa tornado coming through so what they do is provide critical video for us we know that people don't do much when we show radar but hey you show that they're gonna dig a hole and go to a safe place so we have to have more of that and this is the slack app that we're looking for you to download and again Bryan's about to start here in a second you go to the App Store whether it's Google or Apple whichever type phone you have that's the logo in many corporate corporations use slack this is very mainstream in large corporate settings in America it's a marvelous multi-platform communications tool this is what it looks like and for those that have weather instruments if you do we love reports every day even on routine days like today hi-low and rain and a lot of our sky watchers do that but I know that a lot of you don't have instruments and if you don't that's fine we're just looking for you to join us when the weather's active if we have severe weather winter storms flooding anything that's anomalous this is how you communicate with us we're always there 24 hours a day this is open to nobody but those that have been trained so the people that are there they're behaved we don't have any behavioral problems and it's great information within the slack infrastructure you can share video and pictures and it's a great way to communicate so I having said that I'm done we're gonna turn the flow over to Brian Peters for those that don't know Brian he was the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Birmingham for a long time when Brian retired we hired him he's been with us since what oh for goodness that's yeah 1904 and and again it will he's gonna go through a lot of stuff in a short amount of time but at the end you'll do some questions and we are recording this and we'll post it so if you need to go back and watch some of this is something didn't make sense you'd like to see it again we'll post it online here probably tomorrow so having said all that Brian the floor now belongs to you thank you thank you I need to click her too yeah he he gave me heart failure a little while ago I couldn't find the clicker I didn't he was hiding it so okay fabulous everybody doing all right yes well I thank my wife for the grapes that were supper tonight all right well okay James said a number of really good things here's what we're planning to go through tonight this evening tornado climatology a little bit about our history in Alabama and James already pointed out one of the facts that we don't like tornado characteristics that is what are things about tornadoes that we need to know storm structure so that helps you to understand where you're looking visual characteristics as tornadoes form and then we are going to touch on storm safety because it's very important for you all to know exactly where to go in case your storm spotting now the question is why are you here a lot of people come because they have an interest in severe and I understand that that's great I hope you're not here because you want to be a storm chaser because storm chasing is not a really good idea it's very very dangerous but one of the reasons James already touched on that we need you is because radar while a very wonderful tool dual pole Doppler radar is a fantastic tool I would don't want to be without it no meteorologist in his right mind would ever give it up but radar only shows us what's happening in the storm it doesn't follow the curvature of the earth so down here radar doesn't see it now dual polarization gives us something that gives us actually a tornado debris signature TDS but not all tornados do that in Lee County tornado just a few weeks ago basically it did and we knew that that was probably going to be an ef3 area for but you don't know until you look at the damage so you can't tell so we need storm spotters to fill in what's happening down here we may get radar indications up here and there may be nothing down here but as I said things can be very very dangerous and the back a few years ago in Reno Oklahoma there were three storm chasers who were professionals as a matter of fact one of them was the poster child for tornado chasing safety and he and his son and another storm chaser were killed this is not the people that were killed in the Weather Channel lawsuit that's just come about they were had been doing it for years and it just goes to show that things can turn on you and a colleague of mine Tim Marshall who is a meteorologist and the structural engineer basically gave some information that tornado did some things that people expect tornadoes to do but not as many things as it did simultaneously increase in size and intensity change direction and change speed all at about the same time you just don't expect that to happen one of those three is enough okay our atmosphere is what causes our problems and from the space station you see this little blue line up here this very faint blue line that kind of gets narrower as you go to it's the pole that is our atmosphere it's that atmosphere that actually is responsible for the severe weather as a meteorologist the atmosphere goes to about a hundred thousand feet but really and truthfully we don't really care about much over about fifty thousand feet now in the summertime we can get some thunderstorms that go to 70,000 feet or 75,000 feet and our weather balloons often go to a hundred thousand feet but when you really start getting above about 50 or 60,000 feet there's not a lot that is really going on up there that really impacts us down here so we're more interested in the lower part of the atmosphere now I'm not showing an old slide and I've just didn't updated the purpose of this slide is just to give you an illustration that when it comes to severe weather Alabama has all of these and all of these types of severe weather can be killers but the one that's the biggest is this one right here and as James pointed out on April 27th we had 62 tornadoes you know if you took those tornado paths and you lined them up one after the other you would have a total path of just over 1,100 miles that's to Boston from here or maybe even further but the point here is we spend a lot of time about severe storm spotting because this one and in this year in 2002 it killed 13 people you nothing else came close and as matter fact we were lucky we didn't have any flash flood deaths that year we did have six lightning deaths the problem with lightning is lightning picks us off one one at a time it doesn't kill 252 people in an 18 hour period so tornadoes are very very important to us but any severe weather can be very very dangerous especially if it hits you one of the questions that we get and James hates this question well is this gonna be as bad as April 27th it's like wait I live in Halina April 27th was not a bad day we didn't have any tornadoes in Halina you know April 27th was just another day to us but if it's your day when you have a tornado come down your street that's gonna be a bad day but this gives you an example I mean look at that there's white caps on the pool there this is just hail and you can see the debris that's coming from the trees it's really doing a number or on the trees that are nearby and believe it or not this this video is from Arizona so so any storm is going to be dangerous now there's a lot of rotations going on out there in the atmosphere we're not going to talk we're not going to spend much time on all of these we're going to spend most of our time on this one right here but there are these things and I think it's it behooves us to just go through them quickly dust devils are different from tornadoes in that they start at the ground and work up they're basically the developments of an updraft that begins at the ground level works its way up and for some reason something puts a little bit of a spin on it and you get this column and you can see a good example is this one right here here's the dust down at the ground it's the most of the vest is down here but it extends up and believe it or not this is close to 2,000 feet above the ground now it's composed primarily of dust here but there are other things if you go on YouTube and spend a lot of time like I sometimes do you can find one from Burlington Vermont that's a hey Nate oh it's just hay and there's kids that are playing through it I mean because it's not very dangerous but these things that but this would really sandblast your car they are very similar to tornadoes in that they rotate in a counterclockwise direction but they are not tornadoes they are very different they don't usually last long either here's some characteristics their rotations that go up not down they fizzle in clear air typically they're not attached to clouds you saw all those pictures basically were clear air they're found mainly in desert areas that's not the only place wind speeds generally up to about 60 or 70 miles an hour so yes they can do some damage like I said they can sandblast a car very nicely Gus NATO's gusty dough's are a very specific type of tornado because they occur basically on the gust front on the leading edge of a thunderstorm so you've got this air that's moving out away from the thunderstorm interacting with the air that's coming into the thunderstorm and you also create some sort of circulation there and you can get something that develops and here's an example where we can see the debris cloud at the ground it's hard to see there's there is a connection here and there's something up here rotating if you and I were watching this live we would see rotation up here as well as rotation down here but there is a connection in here even though we can't see it here's another example there's the dust right here or to the debris at the ground there is a connection in there because this is coming out of the base of the the shower or thunderstorm doesn't have to be a thunderstorm here's some characteristics the rotations are fairly weak I think the most I've ever seen a gustnado rated was an ef-2 it's connected to the cloud base so that gives it some similarity to a tornado but it's not linked necessarily to a thunderstorm it can come out of a rain shower they're relatively shallow so they don't generally last very long and they are created by that shear and shears just another word for difference along the gust front now water spouts and tornadoes are very similar water spouts are basically a tornado over the ocean it doesn't necessarily require a thunderstorm okay you can have just a rain shower anybody ever been to the coast and seen a a waterspout oh look at all these lucky people I go down there and nothing ever happens we're going to get thunderstorms well that I should tell you when I'm going to the coast next right so you can book your vacation then I think one of the most interesting shots ever of a waterspout is this one right here here is the waterspout and it descended from the cloud base down to the the water surface but notice that you can see the air flow actually coming in like this circulating in and rising then up in the outer parts of that waterspout so you get the idea and the same sort of thing is going to be happening in a tornado I remember going to a survey up in Cherokee County and we stopped these people had a fairly large tree that was down and we weren't too where we thought the tornado path should be and they said oh yeah the tornado down this tree and we found out later of course the tornado was actually five miles north what it was was it's this in floo that was coming into the circulation of the tornado that actually down there tree it wasn't a tornado itself now when it comes to characteristics they can come out of towering cumulus so it does not have to be a thunderstorm there's often no lightning or thunder associated with it they can move ashore if they move ashore they are then tornadoes one of the reason why two of the biggest counties in the state of Alabama are mobile and Baldwin counties because they have their share of water spouts and when they do come ashore they basically become weak tornadoes and in most of the time it's it's going to be an ef-0 or ef-1 rarely it can be a little bit stronger than that maybe as much as an ef-2 but you're not going to find something much bigger than that that brings us to tornadoes and that's what we're gonna spend most of the time talking about and when I'm talking tornado I'm talking the classic sense of a tornado tornado is defined as a violently rotating column of air in contact with the ground it's not magical or mystical like The Wizard of Oz okay it's just air what you and I breathe to stay alive but it's air that's rotating at speeds that vary from as low as about 60 miles an hour to wind speeds that approach 300 miles an hour do we know what the top speed is no we don't we have Doppler radar presentations basically coming out of especially the University of Oklahoma and there DOW as opposed to their Co W I don't think they have any cows do they have any cows at the University of Oklahoma okay okay it's a Dow which stands for Doppler on wheels using that technology with a radar basically on a truck they have been able to measure two documented cases where debris was moving at 287 miles an hour and at 315 miles an hour in both cases they were just above the ground around seven to eight hundred feet and what we know about the atmosphere is its thickest right at the surface so we know that if you have 315 miles an hour at 700 feet you will not have 315 miles an hour at the ground it will be less how much less well the the coefficient of CO of the density of that air will determine that but probably or something or approaching 300 miles an hour what makes the tornado visible is a combination of factors primarily water droplets that come from the cloud and debris that comes from the ground this one is an excellent picture here this is from eastern Arkansas near Jonesboro Arkansas but you can see the debris here but you can also see the water droplets that are forming in this case the wall cloud and we're going to define that more specifically here in just a few minutes as well as what's often referred to as a tail cloud which will point in the direction of the heaviest rain because this air is coming into the tornado circulation and as it's rising rapidly you get condensation occurring at a low altitude so you get this cloud forming you don't always have a wall cloud you don't always have a tail cloud as a matter fact in the southeastern US you're rarely gonna see a tail cloud they can be there but looking for one you're probably going to have a lot of frustration over that because they're just hard to see because we get some problems rain wrapping being one of the biggest here's an example here where there's no wall cloud and you can see there's no wall cloud with this one not as defined as this so a wall cloud is one of those items that's a clue that helps us the tornado is actually attached to and is part of the thunderstorm so as a result that tornado is moving with the thunderstorm that produces it it doesn't move in a different direction if I'm a thunderstorm and I'm producing a tornado and I'm moving this way the tornado is gonna move this way it can't move another direction now there is one one exception to that rule meteorology there's lots of exceptions to lots of rules right James lots yeah that's why we say when you hear or you have a thunderstorm expect the unexpected but one of the one of the possibilities is if you have a supercell thunderstorm that is stationary I don't know in my 50 years in the southeastern United States as a meteorologist I don't know of super cell that's ever been stationary but they do that out in Oklahoma and Texas and Kansas they do that sometimes if a supercell thunderstorm that is rotating produces a tornado that tornado may actually rotate with the overall larger-scale circulation so it can actually go in a circle okay but that is the rarest exception all right that's not going to happen very often again it's attached to the thunderstorm and is an appendage coming out of that and there's going to be generally in super cells it's in the southwestern quadrant we're going to diagram that for you in just a few minutes tornadoes come out of thunderstorms they move with that thunderstorm so if the thunderstorm is moving at 35 miles an hour the tornado is going to be moving at what speed 35 miles an hour if the tornado if the thunderstorm is moving at 70 as one was recorded in Mississippi by the Jackson National Weather Service radar and it produced a tornado that tornado was moving at 70 yes absolutely the main direction of travel is from Southwest to Northeast now take the compass divided into quadrants okay from west to south that's the direction most of our tornadoes will be traveling not always especially when you get into late May and/or the early two-thirds of June or so we often find ourselves in a an upper level regime that's moving from Northwest to southeast if super cells develop in that wind field then the super cells and the tornadoes will be moving from Northwest to southeast okay now sometimes in the summer time we'll get into an upper-level wind regime where we actually have thunderstorms moving from east to west they don't they rarely produce tornadoes but if they were to produce a tornado it would be moving from east to west okay it's not going to move in a different direction than the thunderstorm forward speeds range from as low as zero to as high as 70 and that 70 was the highest speed ever recorded of a tornado was in Mississippi just the state next door to us and as I mentioned earlier the wind speeds are 62 generally expected to be about 300 miles an hour but the truth be known when you start getting above 150 you're basically destroying just about everything in sight unless it's a well well engineered building so most everything's getting destroyed now James showed this diagram and as he pointed out it took one event to put us ahead of Texas I came here in to Alabama in 1989 and Texas had been in the lead until April 27 2011 and our 252 deaths that day caused us to leapfrog Texas and they're gonna have to really go to catch up plus we have to tack 23 more onto that one from this year the interesting thing here is if you talk to somebody and you say where is Tornado Alley one of my pet peeves one of the terms I hate the most Tornado Alley they would probably say old Kansas Oklahoma Texas but if you look at the southeastern United States every one of those blue arrows roof is pointing to a southeastern United States state now let me ask you where's the biggest problem in the United States its Dixie alley and I hate that term alley - okay we have a tornado problem in the southeastern United States okay if you look at Alabama tornadoes since 1950 we've been recording a better data since 1950 we have data on some storms prior to 1950 for example James mentioned the generational if event on April 27th 2011 we had a generational event in March of 1932 that killed and we don't really know how many because the way they counted back in those days were just not sure but it was across central Alabama as a matter of fact Northport was wiped out so as he mentioned earlier it's about a 40 every 40 years now did we have in Alabama two tornado fatalities in 1950 probably not okay but that's how many got reported all right but if you look at this and you sort of draw a line connecting the dots more or less you draw a line it looks like the number keeps increases increasing and then suddenly it just goes off the scale I can explain that no it's not global warming that's another one of my pet peeves okay does anybody have any idea of what happened right about here you're not supposed to answer okay he spilled the beans Doppler radar we actually had the first Doppler radar installed at Maxwell near Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery in 1992 all right so what happened then was we began to see we meteorologist with the National Weather Service began to see rotations so here's what we did we would we would issue a tornado warning and I'm gonna pick on my friends in Coosa County okay I'm not picking on them for any real reason there there's one of the smallest counties in the state of Alabama population density is is very thin out there okay and we just don't get reports out there but we saw this great rotational signature on Doppler radar we issued a tornado warning what else would we do right and we got we look for reports we called police departments we got nothing so the next morning a colleague and I got into work at the same time and I said you know there has to have been something out there that rotational signature is so good he said well let's plot it and go out and drive out there and see if we can find something I said great idea that started what has been going on since 1992 especially here in Alabama I don't know about other places but we would we would plot where rotations were and we would go out and guess what we would find damage that nobody had reported this particular example in Coosa County we're driving out there on one of the roads that goes north and I said to my colleague I said are we about to cross that path and he said yeah you're gonna you're gonna kind of take it's kind of an s-curve it's gonna go to the right and then it's going to kind of come back to the left and that's where the that's where the paths should be I said okay great so we take the curve to the right and we take the curve to the left and all of a sudden boom there's trees down on both sides of the highway and those trees have are you ready for this they have chainsaw marks somebody's been there and cleared the road somebody knew about that and nobody ever reported it so guess what we documented a tornado that was on the ground for over seven miles nobody ever reported it so with Doppler radar all of a sudden we could use the Doppler radar to go out and examine where tornadoes may have occurred in most cases we find something now if you look at tornadoes by month I think everybody is pretty familiar with the peak season of March April and May and April of course we're just about to get there this weekend or I guess it's Monday that is our peak month here with 493 tornado fatalities but we also have a secondary season which is generally in November and actually spills over into about the first couple of weeks of December if you remember back in 2000 the December 16th tornado in Tuscaloosa County as I recall James ef3 yes I rated it I don't know but I know but there's been so many okay so we have this secondary season here in the fall that people are now a lot more aware of now if I plotted I've done it but I don't have a plot of this if I plotted the most dangerous tornado Z F 3 4 & 5 you would see that they mostly occur here and here we get a smattering of them just a few in January and February we don't get any intense tornadoes or violent tornadoes in the summer and early fall most of these are very weak tornadoes these are EF ones maybe on the outside and EF 2 but E of zeros and EF ones because our summer regimes are just very weak and so any thunderstorm can produce a weak tornado but again the peak season March April and May and then the secondary season primarily November going into early December what about time of day well just like the time of year the peak hours are roughly from about 11:00 in the morning till about eight o'clock in the evening and the April 8th 1998 tornado occurred at 7:30 to 8:30 so it was right on the kind of the edge of these peak hours and it was an ef5 but you can see that we have tornados in all hours of the day and night but again if you plotted ef3 Z of fours and E of fives you would find that most of them fall in this red area right here again a smattering anytime of the day or night alright let's talk about the various tornados and some of the characteristics now what I'm gonna do here is we're gonna we're gonna see a picture like this there's a diagram there's a picture of a tornado and there's some information these are the characteristics of this type of tornado all ef-0 and ef-1 s don't look like this one okay this is just one that fell in that category it's to give you an example a sample if you will okay so some of the characteristics the good news here is that 75% of all tornadoes will be in this category why is that good news because these are weak tornadoes and therefore they cause less than 5% of all tornado deaths so we don't typically get a tornado death out of an ef-0 and ef-1 lifetimes tend to be short it's kind of bad news why is that bad news well it's bad news for you and I as storm spotters because once I see it and try to get a report in either via the internet by the phone by the radio it's likely to be dissipating so by the time my report gets in it may be ending so the short life is kind of not in our favor okay path links because they're short in terms of the lifespan the path links are also going to be short on the order of three miles now that doesn't mean every ef-0 and ef-1 is going to be that long I surveyed one in Marshall County it was definitely an ef-0 from beginning to end it never got any stronger than EF zero okay but it was on the ground doing damage for nine miles okay it's not your typical ef-0 because it went a lot further but that's the examples you know things can can change on the Fujita scale Enhanced Fujita scale these are ef-0 and ef-1 s in wind speeds they're going to be in the range from about sixty to one hundred and ten hundred fifteen miles an hour and I'll make a note there that these are the hardest to forecast why because the atmospheric conditions the temperature differences the wind profiles that we look for they're not going to be clearly identifiable they're not the kind that jump off the page and hitch in the head they're very subtle so it's a lot harder to necessarily get out a good forecast you know April 27 2011 James in his first broadcast a week before that event mentioned the possibility of severe weather a week ahead models did our computer models did a great job we were really on top of it those conditions were the kind that jump off the page and hit you in the head not all conditions are that way summertime tornado events are the kind that are the hardest of forecasts for because those temperature profiles wind profiles are not going to be tremendous when you move up the scale you get up into what we consider the strong tornadoes 23% of all tornadoes are going to be in this category and they're going to look something like this again it's just an example it's just a sample here the bad news is we're moving up in the number of tornado deaths in other words strong tornadoes kill more people they also last longer now that's kind of good for storm spotters why well once again like I mentioned earlier for the short ones when you see it and you report it it means it's probably going to be on the ground so if a warning did not was not already out then that means your report would generate a warning and people will get word downstream wind speeds are going to be in the range from 110 to 205 path links because they last longer in time path links are going to be longer does that mean we can have a tornado that's on the ground for three miles and it can be an ef3 sure it's possible okay anything is possible in nature on the Fujita scale Enhanced Fujita scale these are EF 2s and EF threes and forecasting for these events is much easier not necessarily a week in advance but at least a couple of days in advance we're going to see conditions that are more identifiable now when you get up to the top of the scale and by the way the sample picture is Piedmont from March of 94 all right Piedmont Alabama actually near the Goshen United Methodist Church to be specific as a matter of fact we know that the picture was made as the church was being destroyed 2 percent of all tornadoes fall into this category how many tornadoes do we have in a year that fall into this category an average year in the United States is going to be somewhere around 1200 tornadoes 2 percent if my math is right is about 24 ok 24 ef4 zoria 5s that's a lot James pointed out that we had how many three-on-three EF fives that doesn't even count the EF force including the one I think was an ef5 but that's that's neither here nor there 70% of all tornado deaths in other words tornado deaths are very common and likely in these violent tornadoes these can last upwards of an hour there used to be a time when I would have told you that tornadoes don't last more than about 45 minutes to 60 minutes now we're finding out with better after the event surveys that many tornado paths can be eighty or ninety or a hundred as a matter of fact one of the longest that I know of in Arkansas was a hundred and twenty three miles and I'm not talking about a little bit of damage I'm talking about fairly continuous damage all the way along path lengths can be over 50 miles I can't remember James on the 27th how many were over 50 do you know I was so I was so involved in getting the total number of 1,100 miles but anyway okay there were a number wind speeds are expected to be over 200 miles an hour and on the Fujita scale these are ef4 and ef5 s and forecasts are likely again on April 27th is a good example 2011 we were forecasting them a week in advance this just III throw this in here just so you get the idea that we don't spend as much time necessarily on the ef4 and ef5 s those are the little red things right there but that small sliver right there is responsible for 70% of all tornado fatalities all right let's talk thunderstorms it helps to understand the structure of a thunderstorm if you want to know where to look for tornado formation so what do we need to create a thunderstorm we need three ingredients basically moisture instability and a source of lift let's take those one at a time Moisture we got to have enough what that means is we can have too much moisture we're not going to get strong thunderstorms or we can have too little that's one of the things about Saturday evening and Sunday morning right now over this weekend there's a question about how much weather the moisture will come back in sufficient quantity to help produce severe weather we prefer that the moisture be in the lower and mid levels we're talking about the ground to about 15 18,000 feet when you get moisture in the atmosphere from the ground up to 30 or 40,000 feet you've got too much there's too much moisture loading on the atmosphere you're not going to get severe weather in that kind of environment okay but what you really like to see is a sounding and I'll show you what a sounding is here in just a minute you'd like to see a sounding where the moisture is below 15,000 feet and above 15,000 feet it's dry that helps to enhance the development of updrafts all right instability well what's instability instability is the ability for air to accelerate upward okay how do you do that well it's usually identified by the rate of change of temperature with height the more rapidly the temperature changes with height the stronger the instability so for example in the winter it's cold at the ground you know 45 degrees you go up it's cold but the difference is very small you get in the spring and what no we're not at 45 degrees at the ground we're at 75 degrees at the ground but aloft it's even colder than it is in the wintertime so you get a big change and therefore updrafts can become very very strong and then source of lift you've got to get something some agent to get this moist unstable air rising one of the things you can do is a cold front for example afternoon heating is a great example you know in the summertime we get the Sun you know comes out in the morning and we have very few clouds and then by lunchtime you know we're getting a few cirrus cumulus clouds and then by middle of the afternoon we've got a few showers around and then by 5:30 6 o'clock all those clouds have died off the afternoon heating is what is developing those particular clouds an approaching cold front because cold air comes in under warm air so the cold air being more dense actually causes the warmer air to rise over it and therefore it creates lift in the atmosphere and also helps to have an upper-level low-pressure and especially for us in the southeastern United States when that upper-level low is to our West or slightly Northwest then the best lift in the atmosphere is going to be out over our area just to the east and southeast of that upper low now how do we know what's going on in the atmosphere well the weather balloons get all the credit there there's the balloon right there it gets all the credit but all it does is it's the carrier it's the vehicle that takes aloft this little box right here and the Box has gotten smaller with time because now it's all GPS and it's very much more miniaturized the box is probably one-third the size of that I've taken back a few years ago just for your information the balloon is what takes this instrument aloft it goes up at about a thousand feet per minute so it takes roughly about 90 minutes for the balloon to make its run and you see how big the balloon is down here at the ground can you imagine how big that balloon is when it gets up to 90,000 feet I will tell you that we've estimated it and we figured that probably the balloon is about the size of this room by the time it gets to 90,000 feet that elastic really expands but all good things must come to an end right so balloons do what pop yeah you want to know what a balloon sounds like when it pops I've actually heard them are you ready for this that's exactly what it sounds like I know boring innit that was a letdown yes absolutely and and that that sound occurred trying to release the balloon during hurricane Allen which is of real a real challenge okay now once we once we get this balloon to go up and we get this run and get the data what the box does is it records pressure temperature and humidity and it's boring what the Box does is measure pressure temperature and humidity and it sends pressure temperature humidity and then it starts over pressure temperature humidity pressure temperature humidity all the way up to ninety or a hundred thousand feet okay when the balloon pops we can tell from the what the instruments reporting that it has popped so we end the run at that particular point and then by tracking the instrument with this dish up here we can get the wind speed and direction of the air as it goes up now in Alabama and central Alabama we have tracked where our balloons have gone and in the case of several of these we actually have figured out that they probably ended up in the Atlantic because in the spring months our upper-level winds can be anywhere from 80 to 150 miles an hour so as we launch the balloons here and they get up into those real high speed winds aloft they are going to go a long distance we have had a balloon actually returned from up near Washington DC so we're pretty sure that the Atlantic is not out of the question now this is what we get this is what's called a sounding and I'm not going to turn you into junior meteorologists here just you know in just a couple of hours here but right here the red line is the temperature and the Green Line is the dew point now remember what I said about moisture we need moisture down low and not up high when the dew point and the temperature are close together the atmosphere is very moist so right here this is good but you notice what happens here is the dew point goes a long way from the temperature this is very dry that's also very good because that helps to develop these updrafts now you may hear occasionally or read in discussions that there's a cap to the sounding this right here is a cap what a cap is is where the temperature actually increases with height if you follow up here these these lines right here show you this is the zero Degree line this is the 10 degree centigrade line you'll notice the temperature is decreasing from 10 degrees it goes past 700 millibars it gets very close to zero and then all of a sudden the temperature actually starts increasing and then it starts decreasing again what this is right here is a cap so that any updraft as its rising will stop at this point it can't go any higher because if you can imagine a little box of air right in here as it goes up it's to the right of the red line which means the box the air that we're looking at is actually warmer than the environment so as it goes up it stays warmer than the environment but right here when it crosses that red line it's on the other side and it is now colder than the environment which means it can't rise anymore it stops when you have a cap like this that can kill any thunderstorms you expected to develop that day one of the problems we have in meteorology is estimating whether the cap will break or not you know if the cap is 5 degrees that sucker is not going to break that's a pretty big cap now if it's 2 degrees probably going to break so you've got 2 to 5 somewhere in there it may and it may not so you're putting your forecast out there another quick sounding real quick again the red line is the temperature the Green Line is the dew point you notice here it's very dry down low this is the ground as you go up you get up to this level here which is about 600 milliwatts and you notice the temperature in the dew pointer right next to each other it's very wet all the way up this is not going to produce any severe weather at all meteorologists breathe a sigh relief because they don't have to worry about severe weather on that so what's a thunderstorm composed of it's really a combination of two factors an updraft and a downdraft the updraft is bringing the warm moist air that's rising into the storm you can look upon this as the fuel supply that warm moist air comes into the thunderstorm and condenses condensation allows the release of what we call latent heat allows the release of a little bit of heat which helps to develop the updraft the downdraft is the opposite it's going to be falling air because what happens is as this air gets up here the water droplets grow bigger and bigger and bigger and at some point they begin to touch together two water droplets that are very small they touch together and stick now we have a bigger water droplet and then another water droplet touches to that one we've got one that's three times as big eventually gravity takes over here and these water droplets begin to fall when air for when water droplets fall evaporation occurs around the edges of those water droplets that's cooling process so condensation which goes on in the updraft is a warming process evaporation is a cooling process and you know actually everybody in this room that's ever taken a shower I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands to ask how many people here have ever taken a shower okay but have you ever taken a shower and you turn the water off and all of a sudden you hit that little chill that is evaporative cooling your skin is wet and it's trying to evaporate that water and it cools you and so you get that little shiver and that's what's happening here that's helping to create the downdraft now the big thing about updrafts and downdrafts is how they're structured in the atmosphere now I'm trying to figure a way I need to divide this into two parts because I don't want you to look at this part just yet okay just look at the part on the left side in this case this is a good example of a summer shower or thunderstorm okay and what's happening is the yellow is the updraft and then the water droplets are the downdraft so what's happening here well the updraft develops upward the water droplets get bigger they begin to fall and they fall right in the same place that the updraft is going on so what's going to happen here well the updraft can't do much because it's being opposed by the downdraft so what happens is it'll die off and you know you've seen those things in the summertime you know about three o'clock you'll look out on the horizon you see a little shower and then about four o'clock you look out and the showers are all gone well what happened to us the updraft got going but a downdraft also got going and it killed off the shower in just an hour now in the summer time you'll notice these arrows here these are how the wind speed is changing as you go up do you see any changes no there's very little so that means that the updraft and the downdraft are going to be pretty much straight up and down but this example over here this is what we call a sheared environment in this case the wind speed down here is good but it's higher and higher and higher and higher and faster as you get higher in the storm so what happens is the updraft develops upward but not straight up it develops at an angle because the faster and faster moving air is pushing the updraft over so when the downdraft develops it develops away from the updraft when you have this kind of environment you have the environment for super cells and when you combine that with the rotation that is pushed into this rising air due to the wind shear difference not just speed but directional shear difference you get rotation occurring and you get what we call a mesocyclone the mesocyclone is actually what the radar sees the radar sees the mesocyclone we don't the radar does not actually see the tornado if you hear anybody on television say oh here's Doppler radar we're looking at the tornado no you're not it's a mesocyclone yes there could be a tornado in the mesocyclone but you're not for sure looking at a tornado you're looking at the mesocyclone so storm structure identification is very important from where you are storm spotting so this is where we're going to put you in the picture so direction becomes very important at this point okay and I was I'm always looking for better graphics and you know good graphics I steal James's half the time you know whenever I can but I ran across one the other day and I thought oh man this is great this is this is it this is the superior diagram for storm structure so I put it in no I don't think so now this diagram is very true okay all of what you see here is going on but we're gonna stick with my old familiar one that's been around for like 30 years okay okay your storm spotter where are you relative to the storm well this we're generally going to be one of two places we're either going to be a good distance away or we're going to be up close okay so let's start out we're a good distance away we're looking and direction is very very important we're looking west into the middle of the picture so I'm going to go over here and stand in front of you here okay I'm standing here just like you're looking we're looking into the middle of the picture and that direction is due west what direction is that North absolutely what direction is that right now if I turn around what direction am I looking now East absolutely okay direction is very very important now when we're a long distance away from the thunderstorm we may be able to see the anvil the anvil is ice crystals its cirrus clouds it's frozen water okay and it's being blown off a long distance because the wind speeds at this altitude are usually pretty high how high that could be eighty it could be a hundred and forty underneath the anvil you may see what are called mamata s-- clouds these are pouchy looking clouds and I'm going to show you an example of an actual one here in just a minute but they pouchy clouds what they represent is they represent turbulence that's going on at that altitude if you're a pilot and you see this MA modest you want to stay as far from that as you possibly can because you're going to get into really really bumpy ride now we're a pretty good distance away from this supercell and we may be able to see the main storm towers the main storm towers are a reflection of the updraft now remember we talked about an updraft and a downdraft and we talked about how supercell updrafts and downdrafts are separated so what you're looking at here is the main storm tower is tilted like this because the wind as you go up is faster and faster and faster so the updraft is tipping over and you may be able to see these main storm towers they look like cauliflower the cumulus sir the the updraft building is going to be very hard and crisp edges to it because the air is moving up how fast 60 to 100 miles an hour upward moving air now we're going to get closer to the supercell okay and when we get closer we may be able to see under the main storm tower we may be able to see the rain free base there's no rain falling here because the predominant flow of the air is in - and up into the updraft so it's very hard for rain to occur here can rain occur here yes rain can occur here and I'm going to show you an example of one in a few minutes but generally it's rain free under this to the southwest we may see what are called flanking line towers these look like new storm towers they are there new storm towers that are developing upward and they're moving into and helping to reinforce the main storm tower under the rain free base you may see a lowering an isolated lowering that's generally just away from the precipitation area that's attached to the rain free base the wall cloud you want to look for in the wall cloud as you want to look for rotation in here because if a tornado is going to occur chances are it will occur out of the wall cloud now does every tornado have a wall cloud no you're absolutely right does every wall cloud produce a tornado no they don't okay now we're pretty close here we're looking at the rain free base the wall cloud you can tell that these are very very important predictors right here are very important features that we want to be looking for if we look just to the north we're seeing the precipitation this is where the downdraft is occurring the updraft is generally coming from the southwest quadrant rising up into the northeast quadrant and then the northeast quadrant is where the downdraft is occurring now we're gonna take this and we're gonna slice through it the way we'd slice through it with radar or if you and I could get in a helicopter and go up to about ninety thousand feet and look down on the storm this is what we would see in the previous diagram we were over here looking back to the west so this is west this is north this is south this is east okay we were over here looking back to the west this is where the rain free base and where the wall cloud is most likely to be and this is also where the tornado is most likely to be the downdraft is in the northeast quadrant of the storm between the downdraft area and the primary updraft area is where hail Falls because this hail is being held aloft in the updraft but it's it's coming down as it gets near the edge of the downdraft the hail can fall by itself so for example if you happen to view late a map on this you know like a driving map okay and you're driving south and you're hitting large hail you're basically in a big problem because you're going to come out into an area where the tornado is most likely to be you don't want to be doing that okay so the heavy rain is on the northeast quadrant let's take an example of a supercell moving over our location let's put ourselves right up here all right we look to the southwest we've got a very dark horizon the storm is coming our way as we get under the edge of the outflow from the downdraft we get what's called the gust front this is where the direction of the wind is going to change and it's probably going to pick up in speed so out here we probably if this is a spring time Alabama case we probably had a south east or south wind maybe east but probably south east it was blowing it may be 15 to 20 miles an hour the gust front comes by us and the wind direction now changes comes out of the West may pick up to 20 or 25 miles an hour then we get under the edge of the light rain then we get into heavier rain then we begin to notice some of that rain is not rain it's hail we get rain and hail mixed and then the rain stops we get just hail we're in this part of the storm then the hail stops we looked just to our Southwest we see the tornado just to our south and southwest it's going to come by and then we may actually get into some wraparound rain this is the rain wrapping around and then we may break out if this is a springtime example we may break out into the sunshine this wraparound rain is a real problem for storm spotters because rain wrapping what's happening here is that this mesocyclone is rotating like this in a counterclockwise area it's it's a clockwise direction and mesocyclone is a low-pressure area so it's rotating like this so it's helping to drag that rain around it and it's going to obscure our view you can see that the best view from the south for the southwest quadrant of the storm is going to be to the southeast of the storm that's going to give you the best view all right let's take a couple of examples this is an example we're a long way from it okay so can we see the wall cloud and the rain tree base nope can't we're too far away from it we've got the main storm tower in here there's Cirrus is occurring you can see how this looks very fibrous in here and you can see this jet plane he's a he's avoiding this okay the main storm tower is right in here and you can see that it's tilted over because you would follow the updraft would be like that all right now let's take a look at another one this is a great example here's the main storm tower here and this is what's often referred to as the back Sheeran Ville what's happening is in the updraft there is so much air coming into the updraft at all altitudes it's feeding into the updraft and the updraft is getting up to the anvil level and it's trying to be blown downstream but some of that can't go because there's so much air coming in some of it actually pushes back against the flow and you get this back shear it's not going to be very large as a matter this is a fairly large one actually because the air up here is moving that way but the air from the updraft is trying to push back against it now here's an example that gives you a real good clue about supercells super cells one of their characteristics is that they tend to be very isolated here is one supercell right here here's one supercell right here here's the anvil for this one being blown into the screen there's the main storm tower here's the other anvil being blown into the screen there's the main storm tower we're too far away from either one of them to see the rain free base or the wall cloud if there was one okay but it gives you an idea they're very isolated and that's a good characteristic of super cells now we do have a problem in the southeastern US they're often embedded in a larger area of rain the supercell that produced the Piedmont tornado of 94 that killed the people at the Goshen in nine Methodist Church was one of those it was it was isolated but it was also right on the edge of a large rain field now I said we'd see a picture of my modest here's what my modest look like they are very scary looking clouds as a matter of fact back in when I was in sixth grade that's like Jurassic period I'm sure we used to think that if you had modest you were going to have severe weather but that's not true we found that really the basic thing here is there's turbulence at that elevation but there's no correlation between severe weather occurring and modest occurring okay remind you of the diagram and what we're is we're going to look at a series of photographs that were taken by storm spotters and try to identify some of the things that we've just seen in the diagrams I'm going to give you at the end a website whoops I'm sorry remind you of the diagram I'm gonna give you a website at the end that you can go and actually get some of these diagrams for yourself if you care to do that so first before we get started here on the photos I want to show you what a supercell looks like from Doppler weather radar and that right there is the April 8th 1998 supercell storm that produced an ef5 tornado in western Jefferson County and killed 32 people you notice okay I'm gonna back up one you notice the curvature here the hook echo you might say we're gonna go to this one notice the hook okay this is the mesocyclone right here the tornado is right in that spot right there so I'm trying to do this here so you understand that there is a good correlation between the idealized diagram and what we see in reality okay all right and then we also have something with Doppler radar we can also see how the air is moving relative to the radar and away from the radar okay let me explain real quickly if I'm the weather radar and I'm sending out a radar beam through that door okay the only direction that I can see motion is away from me or toward me if the wind is moving at a 90 degree angle that way at a thousand miles an hour the radar is going to point paint it as zero it cannot see motion at a 90 degree angle okay so we're looking at motion away from the radar and towards the radar in in this case here the red is motion away from the radar the radar is actually located right down here so the pink and red are colors away from the radar the greens and cyan our motion toads the radar so right here you have what's referred to as a t vs a tornado vortex signature in other words we have a rotation going on right here it's not the tornado we're seeing it's the mesocyclone now I've kind of thrown you a curve here you see that there's four pictures this is the lowest elevation but the radar doesn't stop there it looks at different elevations up this is the one above that one so one two three and four notice that we have the continuity the red Pink's away greens and cyan hood pinks away cyan toward Pink's away sianthood is i an't would what that tells the meteorologist is I have four different elevations slices of the radar from the radar of the supercell storm I have vertical continuity I'm pretty sure that there's a tornado on the ground the radar doesn't tell me that but based on the continuity here I'm pretty sure that there is one that's on the ground and if I haven't issued a tornado warning I already I better be issuing it right now I want to tell you that I was on duty this night and the radar the warning was already out okay all right now we're storm spotters and we're not far away we're very close to the supercell all right so what can we identify well we're too close we cannot see the main storm towers we cannot see the anvil we cannot see the flanking line down to the southwest I'll tell you we're looking West West is in the middle of the picture right here okay so we're looking due west we do see this over here this is the downdraft this is the heavy precipitation from this point here all the way back here we have what's the rain free base from this point to this point we have what could be a wall cloud now as a storm spotter I'm gonna look at that and say yeah but wall clouds are usually a little concise more concise than that is okay that's kind of broad so what as a storm spotter what I do well I think I would want to keep my eyes on it and this is where what we call Scud clouds or ragged clouds under the rain free base and under the wall cloud can be helpful you see that right there there's at least 20% of you in here that are saying what is that idiot with a microphone telling me because I can already see there's a there's a v-shaped cloud there there's already a tornado okay no there's not this is Scud this is one of those ragged clouds there's some ragged clouds there there's some ragged clouds there now if you and I were there we would see in real life that this is actually rotating around on this side to the north side and here's what the next picture look like there is the ragged cloud that was over here it's now rotated around here's the downdraft here's the rain free base here's the wall cloud much more concise we'll back up that's pretty broad now it's very concise now we've got this Scud that is rotating we can see the rotation in that Scud and now we have something else that's beginning to descend right here that is the start of the tornado now another term you need to be familiar with is funnel cloud funnel cloud is a violently rotating column of air not in contact with the ground okay so if you call the National Weather Service or you put into the sky watcher chat I've got a funnel cloud what did you just tell the Weather Service or James it's not on the ground there's no damage there's nothing happening okay that's what you just when you use those words that's what you just said so don't say I've got a funnel cloud that's touched down because that's an oxymoron you can't do that okay now you call in with this report right here and you say James I've got a tornado what did you just tell James that is on the ground your report is bogus it's not on the ground but you know what James can't tell that because he's looking at radar and he's probably seeing a really good solid rotation in the thunderstorm so he can't he can't deny your report at that point he has every reason to believe that there might be a tornado there so your terminology is very important that's why I always hated on my favorite Channel I won't mention it's not my favorite Channel this is gonna be on youtube so i will say that channel i'm got to play nice yes that channel uses this terminology often we have a tornado on the ground you can't do that tornado means it's on the ground okay alright I'm guilty of it though okay and we're all guilty of it you get excited and that's the way it goes okay so we're watching this we've got the rain free bass we've got the wall cloud we've got our tornado that's descending it's not a tornado yet it's a funnel cloud okay so we report a funnel cloud we advance scuse me we advance in time and now is it a tornado or a funnel cloud okay I heard a little of both and the reason that I am NOT surprised at getting that is it looks like it's probably not a tornado because there does not appear to be a connection right the visible funnel does not appear to descend to the ground but if you look very very closely there's a shadow right there so guess what there is debris occuring at the ground which means what colors air by the way right we can't there's air in this room right we can't see it so there is rotating air that is made visible by water droplets right now from here down to here from that point down to the ground the air that's rotating is not being made visible okay but we've still got over here what's this over here our downdraft remember okay rain free base wall cloud now we're going to advanced in time is it a tornado or a funnel cloud tornado absolutely yes now if you're really sharp and you've been watching carefully you've probably already begun to notice something that is very disturbing what's happening up here this rain is beginning to wrap around now we're looking West so it's wrapping on the west side of this tornado at this point so if we had reported a funnel cloud we would want to update our report it's now a tornado it increases in intensity is there any doubt what you have now no you've got a very highly identifiable debris signature right there you've got visible funnel all the way to the ground it's much bigger now based on looking at this we can tell that that's an ef3 right no we can't and the thing that's irritating me is the television weather people who are looking at radar and telling you they have an EF whatever you can't the enhanced fujita scale was developed based on the damage when you're looking at radar you can't tell now a few weeks ago in southern or yeah it was suddenly County yeah southern Lee County you know based on this the signature we were seeing that was a tornado debris signature at EDS you know I was pretty sure that that was going to be a substantial tornado I still didn't know if it was an EF two three four or five okay but I was pretty sure based on that debris signature that it was going to be substantial the tornado continues to go along we've got our wall cloud we've got the rain free base we've got the heavy rain it's wrapping around and then suddenly boom the tornado is gone nope the tornado is not gone actually there's a slight shadow right there that's where the tornado still is but what has happened is this rain has now wrapped all the way around from the north to the west to the south and to the east it's blocking our view this is why we need all of you okay because my view is obstructed but maybe you're two miles further north and you've got to still get a clear view now the people who were tracking the storm shot this photograph when a tornado develops it usually starts small typical small grows in intensity remains on the ground for some distance with maybe some intensity changes but it will stay fairly substantial and then as it begins to dissipate it will begin to weaken this one has weakened into what's referred to as the Rope stage at the end of its lifecycle right here and the visible funnel stops right there and indeed at this particular point there was no more damage occurring at the ground but this is this is an Oklahoma set of slides here by the way and you can see the damage it did when it went through this it was a park area okay all right now really quickly we're I can't only once in my life I was giving a spotter talk at the Anniston Army Depot and we took a break you're not gonna believe this but it happened we took a break and we walked outside and guess what there was a supercell north of us and we we we actually looked at it and diagrammed everything out the only time I've been in meteorologist for 52 years the only time that's ever happened in my entire life okay so we can't do that you saw the clear skies out there today right okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna put you in the cloud chamber here and we're gonna look at some pictures now you're going to get a clue rain freebase here's the test I want you to figure out as the person taking this photograph as the storm spotter what direction are you looking so you have to know what you're looking at so let's go through some things okay we're looking up here at the top I can't see the anvil based on what I'm seeing I see a rain free base so the updraft is probably right here looks to me like the downdraft is over here and I'm looking at a flanking line down here so this direction is what direction is the flanking line from the rain free base Southwest okay so what direction are we looking okay there you go who said ish yeah south east dish yes okay I would say you're looking more southeast or perhaps even south okay I mean East is east is close but the East is over this direction really okay all right let's take another one now again you got it you got to know what you're looking at so we're looking at a rain free base here's the rain free base what's this downdraft we can see the edge of the main storm towers remember the rain free base is at the base of the updraft okay so we seeing that so we know the updraft is right here and it looks to me like perhaps we've got one store of flanking line tower a second one maybe a third one right there it's hard to say for sure so what direction are we looking in this case West absolutely now there is something in this picture that's a little confusing what's that I heard several different things but I did hear somebody say tornado and that's exactly what I was looking for because that's wrong okay what what shape does it have it has a tornado funnel shape doesn't it okay and guess what it's in the rain free base area where rain shouldn't be falling right but remember what I said earlier you know rain can fall sometimes and that's what this is right here is just a little bit of rain is falling now if you go down to the gallery and you asked a hundred people to describe for you a tornado most of them would say v-- or funnel in their description so when somebody who doesn't know what you know sees this what are they going to report they're going to report a tornado they're not trying to be malicious they think that's a tornado and and I understand why now here's the dilemma imagine you're the meteorologists at the National Weather Service office and you're looking through right up here and you have a rotation you get a tornado reported right here what what do you have to do you have to issue a tornado warning and it's a bogus warning because that is not a tornado okay and and nobody's trying to be malicious all right we do have people out there that do try to be malicious but we they we fear at those out pretty fast okay all right moving on here's another rain free base what direction are you looking I want to tell you this one's harder okay why is this one harder anybody want to guess well that's a good observation but you see this over here that's that's the downdraft so yeah it's it's not as visible and is prevalent yes well the updraft is right here this one looks different because it's overhead okay remember when it's often the distance like this it's going to look like that but when that comes overhead it's going to look like this so you're you know your view is going to determine things also what else is going to help to determine your your visibility here what's the biggest factor well trees is a big factor that's not the one I'm thinking of daylight okay what if it's 9 p.m. what's this going to look like ok now let me let me take just a moment to give you a little information on lightning lightning can be very very helpful it can also be misleading why is that well let's take an example here I'm a storm spotter and I'm looking at a tornado half way down this aisle okay and there's a lightning strike at the door what do I see I should see the tornado quite clearly right because it's backlit by the Lightning okay so I see a tornado now I get another lightning strike but this one is back here what do I see now nothing you're absolutely right I'm very unlikely that the there's enough light from this strike back here to light up that tornado so all of a sudden I'm doubting myself I thought I saw a tornado I get another lightning strike it's like wait it's gone now I've gone chasing in the plane several times and I've experienced this and it's very very real because you begin to doubt yourself because the light changes with where the lightning is relative to the tornado if it's close to and away from you you're probably going to see it but if it's behind you chances are you probably won't be able to see it all right let's take another one here oops what about this one now we're looking at wall clouds here's the wall cloud right here what direction are we looking I just heard it who said you said it what did you say you you're correct absolutely now let's diagram this out how did he figure that out well here's the wall cloud so the rain free base is overhead what's this up here it's the downdraft which is usually north and northeast right and we're southwest so we're looking north we're basically looking north now I've mentioned that one of the things you and I want to look for storm spotters is look for rotation we've got a lot of ragged clouds do you think rotation was occurring here yes it was the person who took this photograph and annotated it by saying that the the rotation and all of these ragged clouds was absolutely clear as a bell all right now remember I mentioned the tail cloud here's an example with a tail cloud there's the tail cloud okay we're looking at the wall cloud what direction are we looking bingo West yes West is in the middle of the picture here's the downdraft rain free base wall cloud tail cloud and remember I said the tail cloud will point towards the updraft notice I'm parmi will point towards the downdraft here's the downdraft air this is wet air notice there's a cloud a cloud a cloud a cloud and then continuous clouds what's happening is this wet moist air is peeling off from this area and rising up into the updraft so you're getting rising motion so clouds are forming right here forming this tail cloud again in the southeastern US we don't see a lot of these kinds of things the tail clouds but it's something that might be there all right now this one is very good example of of how storm spotter reports help to keep a warning from being issued now I will tell you that I took this photograph I will tell you that you're at the Shelby County Airport immediately behind me the photographer is the Shelby County Airport okay what are you looking at right here wall cloud right all right now I will give you one clue here so you can figure out what direction you're looking what's on the road rain and the rain is over here okay now what direction are you looking bingo South you've got it very good okay now how is it that storm spotter reports of this wall cloud help the National Weather Service not issue a tornado warning because the Weather Service was watching up here a rotation on radar this came over Montevallo and the Montevallo Police Department was in constant visual they were in visual contact with that and they kept saying we're getting rotation but nothing is coming out of the base of that wall cloud so that report helped my office at the time not issue any tornado warning so we didn't get people all stirred up about where we would have been justified in definitely issuing a warning with that one okay all right now very quickly remember we talked about tornado and fall cloud so what I want you to do is ignore this and answer the question is this a funnel cloud or a tornado okay we got one dissenter over here I happen to know I know who Jerry is okay but he's dissenting he says we can't tell is he right yeah because what's this trees where does this come down behind the trees right is it on the ground I'm not sure well I know from the photographer okay that this was not a tornado alright but I'm trying to point out here if you called the National Weather Service or you put something in the storm spotter chat and you said a funnel cloud you sent information if you sent this is a tornado you also sent information okay so you have to be careful about your words this was a funnel cloud all right what about this one tornado or funnel absolutely we can follow the visible funnel down to about there now does the rotating air and there or here or here I don't know but it's not reaching the ground because we've got a clear view of the horizon there's no tornado debris signature there what about this one yeah okay yeah this is all debris that's being blown out because it's moving over an area where the fields are plowed what about this one no this is not a yes or no yeah this is tornado or funnel cloud okay all right tornado or funnel absolutely what's making the tornado visible debris actually believe it or not this is north central Texas in December okay what's all this it's grass its leaves all right but just to give you an idea of how hard your job is as a storm spotter this is what it looked like just two minutes later okay now made visible by water droplets condensation okay all right what about this one tornado funnel all right now as a storm spotter are you about to have a problem yeah what's this yeah the rain is coming this way okay so we're gonna lose visibility and we did there it is okay the rain has wrapped around so we can't see as clearly what about this one tornado or funnel absolutely remember the tail cloud there it is right there this is a very interesting slide I got this from a fellow I ran into in Jonesboro Arkansas I used to work in the Memphis National Weather Service office it's kind of funny because I I was supposed to be right he where he's standing I was supposed to give it a spotter talk in Jonesborough this evening and I had to put it off to two days later but this tornado was on the ground for sixty miles and the scary part he wouldn't let me have the other picture but the scary part is there's a US highway right here the tornado is actually moving this way but on that highway was a big yellow school bus very scary all right this is Tuscaloosa tornado or funnel can't tell very very good okay we're gonna stick with this same tornado or the same thing we don't know what about now do we know nope what about now I know now we can tell notice right here that there's a bit of a drop-off in the vegetation right there that's this right here so now we can tell it is indeed and based on the tornado track I know that it was a tornado through all these images okay now quickly tornado safety and I want to end with some videos to try to help you put it in motion okay I know you've looked at still pictures and I want to try to put it in motion for you so we want you to know how to be safe and what to do now this is an example of a house just an example of a house and it happens to be a great example because we also have an after picture this is before you want to avoid upper floors who want to get to the ground floor they have no basement so they wanted to get to the ground floor they had identified on the ground floor a closet that was beneath the stairway at the center of the house that was their storm shelter great storm shelter if you keep bicycle helmets motorcycle helmets and you keep them in that closet that's an excellent closet to go to now I'm an older person and I know years ago there used to be another tornado safety rule we like to advance to really important safety rules get as low as you possibly can and put as many walls between you and the outside there used to be a third rule and that was open windows anybody ever hear that yeah well forget that one just completely wipe it out of your memory banks okay tornadoes do not explode houses meteorologists are sometimes too observant as meteorologists we used to look at some buildings that looked they had exploded take for example a simple garage okay with a garage door you know three sides roof so we would see this garage that was exploded the garage door would be in and the walls would be out and as meteorologists we said well it's the low pressure of the tornado it caused the building to explode and engineers got into the act and said you guys are nuts says that's not true look at the order that had failed the garage doors failed the air got inside the wind caused the walls to blow outward there was no explosive force of pressure it was the force of the moving air okay so forget windows get to your lowest floor most interior spot this is before the tornado this is after there's no safe place to be on the upper floor up here there's only one wall up here standing again the safe place was downstairs now like I told you earlier I've been doing this I've been doing weather stuff for 52 years older than dirt but when I first I've been using this set of photos for a long time and I'm convinced that I may have given a talk to a young James Spann because I made the comment that the safest place in this picture was this house and the the closet under the stairway and this young man on the front row fifth grader I think pointed out to me that the safest place in the picture is across the street at this house over here so if you play back what I said earlier I said the safest place in this house this brings us to automobiles automobiles are not a safe place to be nor are manufactured homes turn me into the manufactured homes industry okay cars are lofted quite easily this car was actually on the other side of this house okay I have seen cars dribbled a thousand yards I've seen them thrown in a curved line 750 yards automobiles are not a safe place to be you are better off being in a ditch or depression than you are staying in an automobile okay so please don't stay in automobiles and if you're in manufactured homes you have a decision and that is when the tornado watch is issued you need to evacuate and go to a shelter or a site-built home alright now what to report we want to know about tornadoes we want to know about hail but the important value is when hail reaches one inch the thunderstorm is considered to be severe one inch or larger so we really don't need to know about a lot of pea-sized hail okay it's okay I know you want a report so it's alright but we need 1/2 inch and larger we want to know about wind damage don't worry about saying whether it was caused by a tornado if you're coming upon damage and you don't know don't worry about what caused it just say I've got buildings with roofs off but be very careful here's an example I got a report from Tuscaloosa AM a lovely people down there okay they were relaying a report to the National Weather Service the report was we have a subdivision in north of Northport on us 43 that has numerous what was the word they use numerous extensive extensive damage to roofs Wow okay think about extensive damage to a roof what do you picture well I went up there the next day to do a survey the worst roof had lost about two dozen shingles now I don't know but it you and me extensive damage that is not even if it was my house okay so be careful about your reports we want to know about flash flooding or flooding and if you know the rain amounts we want to know about that where do you report of course National Weather Service is number one of course we want you to report to us on the storm spotter chat law law enforcement is also good the local emergency management the local media outlet like us 911 is choice only use that when you know that there are deaths and injuries whoops whoops whoops whoops I'm sorry and if you really want to report so that James knows exactly where the damage is just reference the nearest barbecue place okay now we're going to put all this in motion and I'm going to apologize to you never should apologize to your audience but I'm going to apologize to you in advance please don't listen too carefully because there is an expletive a bad word at the start of this video okay but I really did want to include the video from Lee County in the spotter talk this is from a couple three weeks ago yeah okay I'm we're okay it goes by really fast and I'm gonna it's gonna start immediately upon my clicking okay when it does I want you to watch right over here because you'll see the cell phone tower come down okay now what I want you to notice here is that they're really not photographing the tornado that closely all right because the tornado is actually just off the screen a little bit all right here we go here's the tower there goes the tower there goes the tower there's the tornado right there okay that was not a transformer but you see our power lines when they get close together due to the wind and they arc that's what you're seeing it's not a transformer burning out there okay and there's that there's the tornado right there notice the rain that's coming by us so rain is wrapping around this tornado all right the air is very strongly moving this way moving from this side to this side that guys backing up probably a good move on me I mean that side of the road I want to make sure nobody's behind me and then this guy I'm not quite sure what he's doing here because there's the tornado right there and I know what he's doing he's trying to get to the crossover to where he can turn around and go the other way this is us 280 by the way there's the tower no I'm sorry that's the towers just a little bit further north sorry okay he's turned he's videotaping the wrong way now okay so again I want you to watch the motion that you're seeing see the motion that's going on Andy is has passed away he was killed he was a storm chaser he was killed on an accident on his way home after a storm chase but this is in Mississippi and he's entirely too close but especially watched the rotation that you can see here I get a lot of questions about well how fast is the rotation and you know how how much of the rotation are you gonna see trust me you really are going to be able to see the rotation notice what you're seeing right here you can see the rotation going on there okay it stopped all right we're gonna go onto another one here now this one I'll give you some pointers about photographing okay don't walk in photograph it doesn't work all right now is this a tornado or funnel don't know yeah the trees are between us and it right but look at the motion that's going on here isn't that tremendous motion and this may actually it's quite possible this is multiple vortices that is multiple vortexes in there what research meteorologists are finding is that a lot of tornadoes naturally break down into multiple vortexes even some of the weak ones we had a video at the Weather Service from out near past Wilsonville near the Talladega Shelby County line and it never became a tornado but it was multiple Voort vortices in the air it was twin vortices alright here's another one you can see the rotation and it's also rotating but also you can see it's going upward that's what's happening the air is rotating but also rising you can see also there's rain over here it's wrapping around the storm there's one very similar to this the gentleman says on the on the videotape says I hope they'll take this at the radio station like what what what yeah they're gonna broadcast it I'm sure I've only seen two tornadoes in my life both of them on April 27th 2011 and it was very surreal to watch it knowing what it was doing as it moves across the land okay I'm gonna move along because this is a English storm chaser and what's interesting about this one is remember I mentioned that there's a possibility that tornadoes may be stationary well this is indeed one he was filming here and the rotation is very obvious you can see it rotating and rising but notice it doesn't move you're also going to see something else that you'll notice here too and that is how people who are in cars don't seem to know what's going on around them look at the debris that you can see here and again it's not moving much if if at all and I think one of those people is about to come by here there goes somebody what don't don't you look around I mean you know I I do when I'm driving I don't maybe I'm strange I also carry a driver's Lanoue does another one I have to give him credit though he's a storm chaser cuz he had the instrumented van so but isn't that interesting the the height there okay now this next one you're going to see a very very violent tornado and I'm going to point out the destruction of a structure now remember there's no funnel here is this a tornado yes we've cut debris but there's no there's no tornados you know funnel here but we've got a debris signature right here and when he backs out a little bit you'll see there's no connections well there is a connection but we can't see it okay now there's a house right here watch this house this house right here okay well you haven't seen anything yet wait wait for it oh my god yes did you stand right the whole house me now I Toto we're not in wherever Kansas anymore I first saw this video when it was with the Weather Service and I thought yeah I'm supposed to go out and look at debris and know know how it came apart ah no way that house is completely gone yeah it in this case it really did okay enough of that one all right very quickly a couple of things this this was confirmed last night okay weather.gov slash media slash Owly Oh W Li / and the capital s capital G stands for storm spotter guide published June 6 2011 - 11 dot PDF okay it's a large file I think it's on the order of about 85 or 90 Meg's so it may take a little while depending on the speed of your connection all right okay we okay everybody got it weather.gov slash media slash Owly /sg June 6 - 11 dot PDF

Channel: ABC 33/40 Weather

Views: 11,655

Keywords: James, Spann, ABC, 3340, 33/40, Alabama, weather, Brian, Peters, spotter training

Id: x_MzKUTfUKA

Length: 100min 5sec (6005 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019