while a dark-as-all-fuck wall cloud drifted overhead, rotating like mad...Now Playing. "Nobody Told Me About DOOM", by T1na Badgraph1csghost
In amongst doing various soundfont- and migraine-related things, I also got to see my first tornado today! Not my first ever tornado, but that one was like 6 miles away from me and I didn't get to see it form. I just looked out the window and there it was. Today, though—all of the broadcast meteorologists say "don't stand on your porch and watch this thing, get to the center part of your house". Well, I stood on the porch and watched that thing. More the deck than the porch. Whatever. James Spann would still think I was being reckless. And really, it's because of him that I was out there today. Fortunately (on a number of levels), I don't live in Alabama; but one of my long-track hyperfixations is TV news station tornado alerts, and ABC 33/40 always posts theirs on YouTube (therefore, Invidious). Out of all the forecasters, James is always the most level-headed and tries to do more than just warn people there's a tornado. I learnt about tornado debris signatures, velocity couplets, rear-flank downdrafts, and CAPE values from watching James and Charles Daniel; stuff I would have had to pay tens of thousands for at university, I learnt for free watching these videos.
They're long. Right? They last throughout the entire event. Usually, in the US anyway, TV news stations with weather departments will interrupt programming when a tornado warning is issued. While some will just leave you to worry and go back to their regularly-scheduled broadcast, most will remain on the air from the first issued warning until the storm system dissipates or clears out of their market area. Since North America is so indescribably huge, our TV broadcast areas are very large, so a slow-moving supercell thunderstorm complex can take upwards of 2 hours to cross it completely. As such, James Spann, or Ryan Vaughan, or Jamie Simpson, or Mike Morgan, or Ken Siemek, or whoever is on the air for a long time.
Anyway, I've seen enough Doppler radar images of both strong and weak tornadoes to know about things like storm track, pressure gradients, and whether I'm particularly likely to get sucked up into a tornado like Richard Lineback in that one stormchaser film. Plus, there's the peculiarity of where I live. I don't know how it is for other cities in the world, but catastrophically-severe weather has never happened here. Like, ever. Since white people started keeping records of this kind of thing, this city has never been hit dead-on by a mile-wide tornado. Sure, we get tornadoes, but only occasionally, and they're never particularly strong. An ice cream stand from the '50s on the south edge of town got blown away a few years ago by an EF2, but that's the most action we've had in at least 17 years. Also, more than just looking at Doppler radar, I've watched stormchaser training videos, too. They're less interesting, but they taught me what to look for and how to spot a tornado before it forms. So, no, I'm not just some weirdo taking TikTok videos directly in the damage path of an oncoming tornado for content engagement. In fact, I took no videos or photos of any kind. I figured that Reed Timmer someone else was probably around here someplace, taking 4K video of the whole thing, so what do I need with random pics taken with my corporate feudal shackle? I ask you.
I did actually see the tornado forming. See, I thought that the storm was going to track west, where I couldn't see it for all the trees around my flat, but—and this is the thing stormchasers and forecasters hate about supercell thunderstorms—the first cell dissipated when a second one showed up to its southeast and robbed it of all the energy, and the storm ended up tracking directly overhead. I guess that was kind of reckless on my part; I didn't take my laptop with me out onto the deck so I could watch the radar. But, who cares? I was having great fun listening to the pair of Federal Signal 2001-130's and the 3T22 while a dark-as-all-fuck wall cloud drifted overhead, rotating like mad...
Then...
...All that rotation and updraft finally started to do something and the clouds started wrapping up. I should have seen a funnel cloud at that point, but I didn't. I saw three. That's kind of like the tornado equivalent of using Deep Space Nine as your introduction to Star Trek. My first time out, I get a multi-vortex tornado! How sick is that?! I'm probably never going to see another one of those in my life. They're not especially rare as far as tornadogenesis goes, but they just don't happen around here. Like I said before: since white people started keeping records, there has never been a significant tornado event in this city. The county, sure—there was a village to the southeast of here that got 100% destruction in an EF4 back at the millennium; but it's like this city is immune to tornadoes, and no one can figure out why. And, I should point out—even though I saw a multi-vortex tornado forming, it did not actually touch the ground. There was no touchdown here, so we still get to claim our immunity to severe weather. Sort of. I guess floods are severe, and we've had quite a few of those.
Anyway, we're supposed to have more storms tomorrow. Stick around for part II, maybe.
--26 April 2024--