Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Tornado Time!

It's that time of year again! Cold fronts from Canada collide over the Great Plains with warm fronts from the Gulf of Mexico. Result: Tornadoes and otherwise wicked weather systems. I have always loved thunderstorms and such, and these pictures illustrate why. I have included my favorite to get you started:


You can just see the twisting of the cloud formation!

Good Day to You, Sir

4 comments:

nebraska girl said...

That is an awesome picture. I too love thunderstorms and have watched a few tornadoes. My dad and I are both trained storm spotters so I know when to start thinking about hauling people/stuff to the basement.

Law and Order Teacher said...

That is an incredible picture. Nature' power is beautiful but terrifying.

Darren said...

I lived in Colorado Springs for three years. Where the Rockies meet the Great Plains is an ideal environment for tornadoes, and I'd often heard the term "wall cloud" on the radio--it's the precursor to a tornado. But where did that name come from?

One night I looked east from my apartment, out towards the Plains, and I saw what looked just like a dark wall. I'd never seen such a thing before, but I knew it had to be one of those "wall clouds".

The next morning, the big news was that the town of Limon had been leveled that night by a tornado.

nebraska girl said...

That's what storm spotters are trained to look for, cloud rotation and wall clouds. I think going through the training helped because I really learned what signs pointed to tornadoes and hail storms and what would just be a really wicked thunderstorm.