Thread: Would You Believe in December

Well for those that dont know, I chase storms (yes, in my Grand Prix), so Im kinda a weather enthusist. I love lightning and so I focus on that a lot and take a great deal of pictures of that.

But anyway, I get up this morning and am looking for where the snow might be that was supposed to be here late yesterday. So I pull up my software that I use for chasing storms and low and behold I get an alert for a Tornado warning, but its for the eastern TX area. Its December and there are still tornado warnings. That just doesnt seem right to me, though there is not one month in the year in which a tornado hasnt touched down somewhere in the U.S. and every state in the U.S. has had a tornado touchdown.

Anyway, here are some snap shots from the software. The pink box indicates the warned area, the white lines you see that have the x's on them indicate storm movement. Enjoy.

Crazy friggin' weather I tell ya. Ive been chasing storms for a long time and I can tell you there has most definitely been a major shift in the weather patterns. I did hardly any chasing this year at all. The last major storm season, well for me anyway, in 2003 I was so sleep deprived chasing storms that in many cases I was chasing all night long, pulling up in the parking lot at work and sleeping just a couple hours and then working a full day.

It was insane but I got some really good pics.

It is quite amazing just what such a rotating column of air can do.

My experience as a kid with tornadoes was one came near our house (I lived in the south east at that time) and while it didnt really damage the house, it held up well for the winds it was exposed to. However, it took a sheet of tin off the barn behind our house (maybe 75 meters from the house) took it to the barbed wire fence that surrounded the house and wrapped it around the top strand of barbed wire.

The strands were maybe 8 - 10" apart and it was 4 strands (I dont remember the exact spacing of the strands but it was standard posts and standard barbed wire. Its been a very long time since I ran barbed wire) and that long piece of tin (standard sheet of tin) was wrapped around the top strand without breaking any of the other strands, nor damaging any of the posts.

We had to go and cut the thing off the strand of wire as we couldnt un-twist it off there. I SOOOO wish I had a picture of it. I just stood there for the longest time in awe of how such a thing could happen.

Ive never seen trenches caused by twisters, but I havent been around any of the bigger tornadoes either. But I was chasing a EF0, EF1 tops a couple years ago and you could see the circular pattern in the grass where the twister traveled.

I see a couple hook formations in those pics. Did any Tornado ever touch down?

Im not sure to be honest. I wasnt chasing that storm and at the time I didnt think to look at the Base Velocity or the Storm Relative Velocity nor did I check the spotter network to see if they had eyes on anything.

I guess the news would have something if one did touchdown.

Thats awesome. Ive been out a few times myself chasing after storms. Not in my GP though. Ive been interested in meteorology since i was a kid. I started in that major in college but then switched to engineering.

Any particular kind of engineering?

Bumping for Tornado Season!

we just had some tornados in southern wisconsin/northern illinois on sunday.

but it's November....not December.....big difference lol

The pictures no longer work...can you fix?