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Friday, June 27, 2008

Benton County tornado warned storm

This cell was pure OUTFLOW CRAP. As Cullen and I watched the SHELF CLOUD come at us north of Foley, MN and the tornado warning came out, once I again I let loose with a WFT???!!! rant. You guys who really know what a tornadic cell looks like know tornadoes don't come from this:
So, even after calling MPX and letting them know the storm was totally outflow dominant, evidently some super spotter or someone better trained in the use of a taser managed to keep this junk torn warned. Rad vel scans showed NO organized rotation but...

while Cullen and I were at this location:


Looking at this:

A funnel report came out. WTF????!!!! I WILL PROVIDE A $50 TIMBERLODGE STEAKHOUSE GIFT CERTIFICATE TO ANY BENTON COUNTY SKYWARN SPOTTER OR SHERIFF'S DEPUTY WHO CAN PROVIDE A PICTURE OR VIDEO OF A BONA-FIDE TORNADIC FUNNEL FROM THIS STORM. I am done reporting. It makes no difference. This cell got re-warned after this! Hats off to the NWS people who deal with all the crap reports which come in then have to deal with the media backlash of the public becoming immune to the warnings. Going to a Skywarn class every other year up here and watching a video evidently only makes you qualified to make an educated 50-50 guess as to what you are seeing. I know damn well this was another case of "there is a tornado warning so I am going to see a tornado".

I felt really bad for the older couple on highway 95 east of 25 who had gotten out of their vehicle and were standing in the ditch waiting for the tornado to happen. I did stop and let them know it was safe to continue on to the west but to be careful as there would be heavy rain and some minor gusty winds. They seemed rather irked there was a tornado warning for nothing. This is what was going over at the time:
Pretty bad...even for a whale's mouth.

Question for some of the NWS people who read my blog. What criteria is used to issue a tornado warning for a linear storm complex? There was a "inflow notch" of sorts on the line briefly, but nothing to indicate an area of organized rotation on any of the velocity scans. So what gives? I'd like to know as the answer I got from the WCM of a different CWA giving a gustnado the distinction of being "a leading edge suction vorticity" (and an EF1 at that) evidently can be decoded into three letters....CYA. So what gives?

Rant mode off...

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