Success: CWG Captures Tornado on Chase

Awesome stuff Andrew.. must have been pretty cool to see. I can't help but be a little jealous. ;-).

You can't always tell the wind speeds, of course, just by the funnel shape, but, in general, that looks like about an F4.

A major hazard, when getting close to a tornado that big, even more so than the funnel itself, can be large hail. Hail in supercells like that, particularly on the High Plains, can reach baseball, tennis-ball, or, in some cases, even softball/grapefruit-size.

Congratulations Andrew!!

I love the part at the end of the youtube video where he's just chatting about how the tornado could come down again right where they're standing, and then he realizes what he just said and freaks out a bit.

Really gorgeous footage.

It's no surprise that a cell finally appeared once Andrew was there. Those of us who regularly read his work know that he's adept at stirring up storms. Nice work, Andrew!!

I saw much of the footage live yesterday on the Weather Channel.

The tornado itself was over open country, probably west of Lagrange, WY, or in the Hawk Springs area between Yoder and Lagrange; all these towns have populations aoa 100. On radar, the parent supercell traveled in an easterly direction; the northern fringe passed just south of Yoder, and the entire supercell passed over Lagrange, which probably reported heavy rain and/or hail. Only the southern third of Goshen County was affected; the "major" poulation centers of Fort Laramie, Lingle and the county seat of Torrington were well north of the storm and unaffected. After passing through Goshen County, the storm traveled eastward into Nebraska, where the VORTEX2 team was predicting possible further tornado development.

The tornado was slow-moving and passed through a complete tornadic life cycle in 25 minutes, thus making it an ideal target for VORTEX2 observation. TWC is saying today that data collected yesterday by the team will undergo analysis for years. Such research will be useful in refining future tornado forecasting and warning strategies.

Heavy tornado damage near Moscow:
Rare Russian Rotation

I posted some new photos of today's deployment (which did not catch a tornado, but did find a gorgeous non-tornadic supercell) on our Capital weather gang facebook group page. I will have a story about Friday's deployment for Monday, and stay tuned to our Twitter feed for constant updates as long as cell phone coverage allows it. Sunday may be a very active day.