Radar Imagery Of The El Reno Tornado

Interesting video! Cloud base is SO low! It looks like cloud base is only a few hundred feet above the ground. And the initial vortices too, all circling around a common center....



The radar imagery is striking....

Indeed, as I thought, I have a compilation of meteorological papers called "The Tornado: It's Structure, Dynamics, Prediction, and Hazards" (C. Church, D. Burgess, C. Doswell, and R. Davies-Jones, Geophysical Monograph 79, American Geophysical Union, 1990). I looked at it for ten minutes, enough to know that the tornado emerged from the south side of what's called the 'Flanking Line'. (Tornado meteorologists have their own specialized vocabulary that peasants like me have a little trouble penetrating.) I wonder if most tornadoes tend to come from there? (For a meteorologist, I'm a tornado neophyte, spoiled by an almost funnel-free life in the American Southwest.)

This should be fun....