Tornadoes Without Rain?
By Gannon Medwick
Friday, May 30, 2008
A nice viewer recently emailed me with the following weather question:
I have noticed that any time I see footage of a tornado, it doesn’t seem to be raining very hard or at all. Is it more likely to NOT be raining when a tornado forms?
That’s a fine question indeed, as it prompts an answer that looks at the unique structure of tornadic thunderstorms:
Tornadic thunderstorms (called “supercells” or rotating thunderstorms) usually have a different structure than ordinary storms. In supercells, the downdraft side of the storm (where heavy rain and hail is) is separate from the updraft side (where a tornado might form). If you were to position a camera on the downdraft side of the storm you wouldn’t likely be able to get a shot of the tornado because visibility would be obscured by rain and hail. But, if you were to shoot a tornado from the rear flank of the storm, near the exposed updraft, you could theoretically get a fantastic shot of a tornado.
Most video you may see of a tornado from, say, the Central U.S., comes from storm chasers who take care to position themselves along the rear flank of a supercell to ensure they have the best chance of spotting a tornado without falling rain or hail obscuring it. Last Mothers’ Day, several eyewitness accounts of the Belgrade/Maysville tornado came from areas just south of the tornado’s path – on the exposed side of the storm.
So, it’s not so much that the thunderstorms that produce tornadoes can’t or don’t produce a boatload of rain and hail, too. It’s more that the photographers that can shoot great tornado video – the kind that will make it on the news – shoot the storm from just the right angle.
Storm Team 9 always welcomes your weather questions. In the meantime, enjoy a storm-free Friday!
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