A rather nasty supercell cruised just south of the city Tuesday night, dropping a few twisters and some near legendary hail. There's a squall line forming up now, it's about 40 miles SW, rolling east and becoming more coherent, though the early morning lines aren't usually the ones that turn into killers. This is the "warm" line of storms, as much warmer and humid air moves up from the south, it'll push a line of moderate storms ahead of it. Later, we'll get a cold front coming back through, with another line of storms. This'll repeat for most of a month. It's usually the cold-front storms you really have to worry about, but there's been enough early-morning warm front tornadoes that you pay attention.

April and May are always interesting times.

We were in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from the nearest shelter. There was nothing to do but press on. Thankfully the wall cloud was rather to the south of the highway. I watched it as much as I could while I drove — the base of the wall cloud was rotating, but no funnel formed while we were in the area.

And, after we passed the wall cloud to the safety of the storm's interior, as we came through to the other side of the storm, we reached the sunlight shining through in the amazing golden half-light you note in the photos to which you link. Photographs can't do justice to that light, not really.

I don't suppose anyone knows of a page that posts QuickTimes or other videos of tornadoes?

As far as Erik's comment is concerned, I hear him about longtime ingrained warnings of that sort. Last year, I was living in North Florida, and every day at about 4 in the afternoon, the whole area would get pounded with tremendous gullywasher rainstorms. Nobody there could understand why I'd rush out to see the color of the sky when they'd start; after all, they didn't live in a place where those sorts of storms, where you could hear the rain pounding on the roof over the sound of stereo headphones, were immediately followed by tornado sirens. Nothing like watching two funnel clouds pass over my old high school (while I was _in_ the school) to get those sorts of habits...

Of course, it's sheer laziness on my part. Ten seconds with Google gave me this link. (In QuickTime and RealPlayer.)

MKK

And, now, Okalhoma City gets smacked, including a GM plant. And my local weather forecasters post this gem of a forecast discussion. Normally, these are in a very terse syntax, developed when t
hey were propogated by slow teletype links. (parentheticals in lc are my expansions)

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ST LOUIS MO
400 PM CDT THU MAY 8 2003

SHORT AND UNSCIENTIFIC FORECAST DISCUSSION DUE TO ACTIVE WEATHER...

SEVERE WEATHER THREAT CONTINUES OFF AND ON THROUGH SATURDAY NIGHT AS WAVE AFTER WAVE FORMS OVER SOUTHWESTERN KANSAS AND MOVES NORTHEASTWARD BRINGING VERY MOIST AND UNSTABLE AIR INTO THE AREA. POTENT UPPER LEVEL SYSTEM KEEPS SPINNING OFF SMALL VORTICES AND EJECTING THEM NORTHEASTWARD WHICH HELPS ENHANCE VERTICAL MOTION THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD. SHEAR AND BUOYANCY PROFILES ARE FAVORABLE FOR SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAKS ON AND OFF WITH THE ONLY REAL BREAK DURING THE DAY FRIDAY AS IT LOOKS LIKE WEAK CAP WILL KEEP THE UPDRAFTS FROM BUBBLING UP. CONSIDERED INTRODUCING A SLIGHT CHANCE
POP (propability of precipitation) FOR FRIDAY...BUT DECIDED TO HOLD OFF AND LET THE NEXT SHIFT MAKE THE FINAL DECISION. BOTH MODELS ARE FAIRLY CLOSE WITH THE FROPA (front passage) WHICH WILL END THIS BOUT WITH SEVERE WEATHER ON SUNDAY MORNING. EXTENDED...WE'LL FINALLY HAVE A BREAK IN ALL THE SEVERE WEATHER AFTER THE COLD FRONT FINALLY MOVES THROUGH. HIGH PRESSURE BUILDS
INTO THE MID-MISSISSIPPI VALLEY REGION BEHIND THE COLD FRONT AND IT LOOKS LIKE AT LEAST A COUPLE OF DAYS OF PLACID WEATHER UNDER AN UPPER LEVEL RIDGE.

Thankfully. It's been storm after storm in St. Louis, each worse than the last, and it looks like there's a fair amount of weather in the area tonight -- though it looks like Mid-State Illinios and points north are the big losers tonight -- there's a line of storms from St. Louis north to Peoria, and a wide area all the way up to Madison, WI. The NEXRAD Radar Summary for the are sums things up. The 3 digit numbers are heights of echos, in hundreds of feet (350=35,000 feet) the 2 digit numbers at the ends of arrows are speed of that motion indicated by the barb, in knots. Blue and Red Boxes are Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado watches. "HAIL" means Nexrad's picking up very strong spikes, which means ice, not water. "MESO" means Mesocyclonic activity -- a very intense, rotating storm. "TVS" is Tornado Vortex Signature -- the doppler of the winds indicates a tornado. If you look now (2300CDT, 08-MAY-2003,) you'll see a cell just SW of Peoria, IL (PIA), tops of 45,000 feet, moving NW at 58 knots(!) showing hail and a tornado signature.

It's one of those nights, though, right now, it looks like it'll stay mostly quite here -- just the tail of that line might hit us. But my neighbors to the north are in for a long night.

--but the little jpegs don't really do his subtlety justice. See if you can find some originals.
Winslow Homer and Albert Pinkham Ryder also did some good stuff.

Reminds me of my attitude towards earthquakes: when I was a kid, I thought small earthquakes were exciting and interesting. Then I lived through Loma Prieta, and my attitude towards them changed dramatically.

David Eppstein linked to an amazing picture; and I was even more surprised to find a comment on that page from David Goldfarb. In case anyone else was wondering, that wasn't me; it's David A. Goldfarb, a professor of Slavic languages at Barnard College in NYC.

Meanwhile, speaking of traumatic disasters, not only did I have to change web hosts, but Netscape mail has been unavailable for days.

It's been my experience that tornadoes in the Great Plains have a much lower death rate than those in, say Ohio, or other similar areas of the midwest simply because people in the Great Plains have more experience dealing with them and know better what to do. And not do. About 10 or 15 years ago tornadoes completely destroyed the small Oklahoma town my grandparents lived in, but there were no deaths. Mind boggling property destruction, but no deaths. The reason I prefer tornadoes to earthquakes is that you do, in fact, get warnings with tornadoes, and there are measures you can take to make yourself safe. There's no warning for earthquakes and about all you can do is pray the ground doesn't open underneath you and that nothing falls on you. The feeling of helplessness is simply overwhelming.
Yes, I do have control issues. Why do you ask?

MKK