Tornado outbreak

National Weather Service ^ | April 10, 2005

[sunnysky]

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WICHITA KS 608 PM CDT SUN APR 10 2005

KSC167-102330- /O.CON.KICT.TO.W.0006.000000T0000Z-050410T2330Z/ RUSSELL KS- 608 PM CDT SUN APR 10 2005

...A TORNADO WARNING CONTINUES FOR SOUTHWESTERN RUSSELL COUNTY UNTIL 630 PM CDT...

AT 604 PM CDT...TRAINED WEATHER SPOTTERS REPORTED A TORNADO. THE TORNADO WAS LOCATED 7 MILES SOUTH OF GORHAM...OR 10 MILES SOUTHWEST OF RUSSELL...AND MOVING NORTHEAST AT 25 MPH.

THE TORNADO WILL BE... 5 MILES SOUTHEAST OF GORHAM BY 615 PM CDT. NEAR RUSSELL BY 625 PM CDT.

THE TOWNS OF GORHAM AND RUSSELL ARE ALSO IN THE PATH OF THIS TORNADO.

AT 606 PM CDT TRAINED SPOTTERS REPORTED A LARGE TORNADO ON THE GROUND 10 MILES SOUTHWEST OF RUSSELL.

[sunnysky]

Sounds like a bad day in Kansas. Any freepers in Russell?

[ConservativeMan55]

I'm telling you. The end is near!

[sunnysky]

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED TORNADO WARNING NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WICHITA KS 625 PM CDT SUN APR 10 2005 THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN WICHITA HAS ISSUED A * TORNADO WARNING FOR... NORTHWESTERN RUSSELL COUNTY IN CENTRAL KANSAS. * UNTIL 715 PM CDT * AT 621 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR WAS TRACKING A TORNADO NEAR GORHAM...OR 7 MILES WEST OF RUSSELL. THE TORNADO WAS MOVING NORTHEAST AT 30 MPH. A TORNADO IS CURRENTLY ON THE GROUND 2 MILES WEST OF RUSSELL.

[leadpenny]

Is Bob Dole a FReeper?

[brytlea]

Praying for anyone in it's path.
I am not a tornado fan. Glad to live out of tornado alley for now.
susie

[MisterRepublican]

"It's a twista!...It's a twista!". "Dorothy!".

[Boundless]

There's a line of storms that have been popping tornado
warnings all afternoon along I-70 in Kansas. We've been
watching on the web radar (from further east), because
some relatives are punching through that line in a car,
and then heading west into the blizzard (on "vacation").

Nothing unusual for Kansas, and as usual, there isn't
much to damage, except perhaps a cow or two, where that
funnel is at the moment.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Any freepers in Russell?

Not no more ~

[sunnysky]

Hopefully it missed the city.

Yes there is a blizzard in Denver. Wild weather :) Welcome to Spring!

[Crazieman]

Blizzard warning side by side with a tornado watch.

only in Kansas.

=]

It may be boring here, but our weather is interesting!

[El Gato]

Is Bob Dole a FReeper?

I don't know, but Dorothy, Toto, The Wizard, TinMan, scarecrow, Oz, and even Witch are! Those twisters may result in folks not being in Kansas anymore.

Seriously, y'all take care up there. The same line is kicking off some farily strong stuff from the Texas Hill Country all the way north to the Red River and beyond of course. So I may have to find out how well built this new house is sooner rather than later. The storms are just a county to the west and moving this way.

[Mears]

I live in Massachusetts and we only had ONE notable tornado---in 1952!(Killed about 250 people)

They still scare me to death!Give me a good old blizzard any day of the week.

[IonInsights]

Here are pics of one I took in my backyard last September, on a cool 60 degree late afternoon (SE Michigan).

If you look closely you can see the dust plume from the touchdown, and in the last pic you can see it roping-out in its final stage.

[Mears]

Georgeous pictures----sheer terror. I have an inordinate fear of tornadoes and if I were present when you took those pics I would terrified..

As some character in the old movies used to say,"Feet don't fail me now"

[IonInsights]

It was a pretty wimpy F1 tornado. You could tell it wasn't going to cause significant damage.

[Mears]

How,pray tell,do you know how much damage it is going to cause?

[Teplukin]

Q) What does a twister in Kansas, a hurricane in Florida and a divorce in Maine all have in common?

A) One way or another, someone is fixing to lose a mobile home...

[Lexinom]

It's hard to tell what we're looking at in many cloud photos. The clouds definately seem to show some evidence of wind sheer and vertical development, but I don't see a wall cloud (unless that's it at the base, way off in the distance). I am assuming the twister is the whispy rodlike feature with a base at the middle-left edge of the pictures and extending rightward and slightly down.

Under the conditions you described, you may have seen a gustnado, which forms differently and is much weaker than a traditional tornado. They form from horizontal sheer and turn downward, kicking up dust and causing very minor damage. They also typically form at the front edge of a storm, where rising hot air interfaces with descending cold air, which provides the necessary spin.

[prairiebreeze]

I used to be extremely fearful of tornadoes, having been in one, around others etc. Then some Islamic a$$holes flew planes into buildings and it sort of gave me a different perspective on storms.

I still respect them fully, but I'm not as terrified as I once was.

Or maybe I'm just getting old, LOL!

[Lexinom]

Conditions give a great clue.

F5 tornadoes are less than 1% but produce the majority of fatalities and damage. They form in supercell thunderstorms - also quite rare, thankfully - which is a storm that forms all by itself with no competing storms. Typically, it's a clear, hot humid day, late in the afternoon, and the storm blows in rather suddenly. The sky can turn many different colors due to chromatic scatter. Green, yellow, and pink skies are not unheard of. The worst storms will turn the sky pitch black.

The supercell is alone; it gets to suck up ALL of the humid rising air to feed itself, without competition from adjacent storms, and grows larger and larger, producing a higher column (the classic anvil-shaped clouds). The rising humid air can shoot up as fast as 150 MPH! It spins while rising - the water-down-the-drain effect. This spinning is called a mesocyclone, and can be seen in the form of a spinning wall cloud - a lower, flat-bottomed section. Meanwhile, the moisture from the rising humid air freezes and falls in the form of hail, producing a downdraft and further air distrubance.

An F5 tornado from such a storm will wipe a well-built house clean off the foundation, leaving no debris.

If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.

Other strong tornadoes (F2-F4) can form in squall lines. For some reason, they usually form at the southwest corner of the line, the southwest, and the north.

Weak tornadoes and gustnadoes can form in cooler weather.