STORM2K

This Lightning strike was videotaped by myself on May 19, 2005 as a Tornadic Storm was moving from NW To SE Along a very strong warm front in the area. I am near Highway 44 and a local county road right on the Morgan/Johnson County line. If you look carefully where the strike came down from, the clouds right above look to be rotating. This is the area right where the hook on radar was at. Link:

http://www.usaweather.org/staff/jcoving ... ichael.wmv

Wow.....great video.....glad ya'll didn't get caught in that tornado.

No doubt about that. Did ya see that Rotation? If it had made it down, we would have had one heck of a view!!

That storm did produce a brief tornado about 1 hour later on downstream to the SE

You're much braver than I am....my car would have been turned around heading in the opposite direction. Really neat video though

Just please be careful in weather like that next time-- especially with kids! But great lightning catch!

CajunMama wrote:You're much braver than I am....my car would have been turned around heading in the opposite direction. Really neat video though

No doubt about that I used to be sooo afraid when I was the kid's age of storms. They have fallen in love with them. Their mother isn't as scared of storms as she used to be. All comes in the education from the crazy man (Being me

cswitwer wrote:Just please be careful in weather like that next time-- especially with kids! But great lightning catch!

Absoutely. It sounds crazy, but I have been all about my kids seeing stuff earlier and even having the opportunity to see things that I never got to see when I was their age. I obviously don't want to tornado to take us away or anything like that, but I would like for all of us to see one. That's right, I have YET to see one myself (And I have a Severe Weather show too!

Also check out the Line of Power Poles to the left right before I pan over to the main strike. You will see what appears to be the Step-Leader stroke fry a transformer down the road

Looking at the archived radar data on the storm you were on, it would appear that the tornado formed on a storm that broke almost due south-south east (right mover) away from the main line that was training east. Hard to tell, but it looks like it may have been a brief embedded supercell. You should be able to see it in the base reflectivitiy image below. Gate-to-gates lasted for about five minutes and it would seem the rotating part of the storm tracked due south. About 15 minutes later that storm was more or less merged with a new storm that popped off of the original line's outflow boundary.

BREF 0.5 tilt:



SRMV 0.5 tilt:



You can really see the meso on the SRMV 1.3 tilt (note, this is 5 mins earlier than the 0.5 tilt):



Be careful with the kids out there, especially if you're new to recognizing storm features and are just learning intercept strategies. It's hard to tell from the video, but if the meso was passing to your left (west), and storm motion was south, and it was starting to rain, you were probably about to get cored. Probably not a big deal with that storm, but with some storms... well, hail can be a very evil thing. Might be worthwhile to bring along saftey glasses for all the kids, just in case.

COOL VIDEO, THANKS FOR SHARING!!

Windy wrote:Looking at the archived radar data on the storm you were on, it would appear that the tornado formed on a storm that broke almost due south-south east (right mover) away from the main line that was training east. Hard to tell, but it looks like it may have been a brief embedded supercell. You should be able to see it in the base reflectivitiy image below. Gate-to-gates lasted for about five minutes and it would seem the rotating part of the storm tracked due south. About 15 minutes later that storm was more or less merged with a new storm that popped off of the original line's outflow boundary.

BREF 0.5 tilt:



SRMV 0.5 tilt:



You can really see the meso on the SRMV 1.3 tilt (note, this is 5 mins earlier than the 0.5 tilt):



Be careful with the kids out there, especially if you're new to recognizing storm features and are just learning intercept strategies. It's hard to tell from the video, but if the meso was passing to your left (west), and storm motion was south, and it was starting to rain, you were probably about to get cored. Probably not a big deal with that storm, but with some storms... well, hail can be a very evil thing. Might be worthwhile to bring along saftey glasses for all the kids, just in case.

Indeed Windy thank you so very much for all of this helpful and insightful data!

I think I would like you have you on an edition of Severe Weather Central in the future. Contact me at mosspier@insightbb.com and we can get that setup!!