cyclone77

Thanks for all the pictures. It's amazing how quickly some of the trees sprung back to life. Even though the landscape still looks barren, it seems a lot more upbeat with most of the debris removed. It's starting to look more like a giant construction site now than a scene of a huge disaster. They've made amazing progress down there.

I'm still thinking the supercell that was in the process of merging with the Jopin supercell from the south helped enhance the meso of the Joplin supercell.

Don't know if this video was posted or not. This must have been on the northern edge of the tornado, as it says the camera's pointing north.

Franklin Tech was a brick building right across from the high school. There's nothing left of it now. I think the bricks are about ankle high. It was used to help determine the EF-5 rating.

I just read that 139 are now dead.

The amount of force it would take to destroy a well built brick building like that is just unfathomable.

I suspected it was the interaction with the northern cells, perhaps they produced an OFB that the southern cell merged and traveled on that boundary. That would be why the HRRR was picking up insane somewhat localized helicity of 500+ coupled with the rapid updraft due to 5000 CAPE.

And...

Was just informed that they found a car with 5 people in it, in a pond not far from me. They are going to drain the pond and look for more bodies. Was informed earlier they found a body on someones pasture near here :-\

Horrible news there.

I'm sure there will be many case studies done on this tornado. This has been an especially active year for violent tornadoes, but this tornado is the most unusual in how quickly it evolved, and how violent it was.

Just watched the radar loop of the Joplin storm and noticed something kind of interesting. As the parent supercell was moving through Joplin another supercell had quickly developed just to the south. This supercell quickly moved northeast and seemed to interact with the Joplin sup. The FFD on the northern edge of the southern sup may have helped to tighten up the RFD on the Joplin sup, and may have also helped tighten/funnel the inflow on the east/southeast side of the meso. That could explain why the thing exploded in intensity so quickly, and also why it only lasted 6-7 miles.

http://www.rap.ucar....e=23&duration=2

NOTE: The above radar loop will not be viewable after today, as it will fall off the 5-day archive.

Glad you're okay JoMo!

Keep in mind even if JoMo is okay (and I sure hope he is), unfortunately there's a very good chance he may have family and friends who may not have been so lucky.

That first post in the thread is as close to a proximity sounding for Plainfield as you are going to get. The sounding is from the day of the Plainfield tornado...and Peoria is the closest sounding site.

Ahhh, what the hell? I didn't even see that lol. Yeah that's pretty sweet right there.

I'd like to see a sounding for northern Illinois the afternoon the F5 tornado hit Plainfield Illinois. There had to be a lot of instability that day, as I recall reports saying how hot and humid it was. The storm moved southeast, so it probably attained some enhanced SRH, so mid and upper winds may not have been too impressive. Still would be an interesting sounding I think.

138 preliminary tornado reports for today.

The last one they have listed is from 0300. There's surely been more since then.

?

The Tuscaloosa/B'ham cell is in Georgia.

I meant about to cross into North Carolina, not Virginia.

Just unbelievable that the Tuscaloosa storm is still likely producing tornadoes as it's about to enter Virginia. These videos are incredible as well. Camera technology has come a long ways since the Andover tornado too.

EDIT: Woops meant North Carolina lol.

just started to post that. The sound is unreal, even more shocking are the horizontal vorticies just flying around the funnel.

I can't remember seeing horizontal vorticies from a perspective like that before. Simply incredible.

I switched over to the Atlanta radar on GR2. The couplet southwest of Rome Georgia is still raging. What an absolute BEAST of a supercell.

The couplet southeast of Ashville Alabama looks pretty strong again. Amazing that the storm is still going strong this far away from Tuscaloosa.

Just incredible parameters over Alabama right now. 1km EHI over 12, 3km EHI over 14. Effective SRH over 700m2/s2! Effective tornado at 11.

Absolutely sickening. Sure hope the folks down there took this event seriously.

The above posted WRF model seems to agree with the HRRR. Looking at the amount of convection over the Mississippi Valley it's probably safe to say we're gonna see a lot of leftover convection early tomorrow. What's interesting is both the WRF and HRRR lay out an east/west boundary over central Mississippi and Alabama later tomorrow morning. This will no doubt retreat northward towards the Tennessee border by afternoon. This boundary may interact with and help enhance powerful supercells where it lays out tomorrow afternoon.

There continue to be some very critical differences between the NAM and GFS for tomorrow. Should be an interesting day to see how things evolve.

The northern threat is definitely a bit tricky. The new GFS would indicate the best tornado parameters stay further south like some of the earlier NAM runs indicated. Areas of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky are definitely looking like the most likely areas for significant severe tomorrow. Further north may have a lot to do with how tonight's convection evolves. That will no doubt influence exactly if and where that secondary low develops/evolves.

Might as well change the title of this thread to just the 27th now that we have a 26th thread.

Tuesday's thread...

http://www.americanw...severe-weather/

Mods feel free to move my last few posts to the new thread for Tuesday.

Wow not often do you see such amazing shear coinciding with large instability like this.

Yeah it's looking pretty ugly in that area.

FWIW the long range RUC forecasts cape in excess of 5000j/kg in this highly sheared environment over northeast Texas late tomorrow. Likely overdone, but I'm sure we'll be seeing monster sups traversing northeast Texas/southeast Oklahoma later tomorrow....

Pretty sick forecast soundings coming out of far southeast Oklahoma/northeast Texas tomorrow evening. This event won't be as widespread as what will happen Wednesday, but some strong tornadoes look quite possible over some of the same areas that were impacted today.

00z NAM forecast sounding over far southeast Oklahoma tomorrow evening...

Very impressive theta-e feeding due north underneath the very powerful west-southwesterly 100kt+ H5 jet. Just wow.