Fascinating Time Lapse Of A Severe, Rotating Storm Over Rutland County, Vermont

Screen grab from a Jeffery Smith-created time lapse of a
rotating mini supercell thunderstorm last Friday. This is
looking north from West Rutland, Vermont. The lower
cloud over the slight ridge on the right side of the 
photo appears to be a possible wall cloud, which
can be a precursor ro a tornado, No tornadoes
occurred with this storm. 

That powerful thunderstorm last Friday that rolled through central Vermont and southern New Hampshire was unique. And we have video proof of just how cool that storm was. 

It developed near Ticonderoga, New York and by the time it traveled the short distance into northern and central Rutland County, it was rotating and spewing damaging winds and hail. 

The storm passed just north of West Rutland before thrashing Proctor and the north and east sides of Rutland with winds that tossed down trees and power lines. 

In West Rutland, photographer Jeffrey Smith, who does a lot of fantastic drone and surface shots in and around the town, captured an absolutely fascinating time lapse of the storm as it passed just to the north of West Rutland and slammed into Proctor. 

Here's the video. A description of what's going on is below.

The time lapse video is over West Rutland, looking north toward Hanley Mountain. The center of the storm is right behind the mountain. 

The National Weather Service in South Burlington had issued a severe thunderstorm warning pretty much as it entered Vermont around the town of Benson. The severe storm warning was still in effect when this video was shot. 

Meteorologists had noticed broad rotation in the storm by the time it reached its position seen in the video. But correctly, in my opinion, they did not issue a tornado warning as the storm did not appear to be preparing to form one, 

However, the video shows the storm might have come close to creating a brief one. 

Despite the extremely high quality of Smith's video, it's hard to tell exactly what some aspects of the storm meant. 

As you can see in the time lapse, the storm was clearly rotating, left to right. Near the beginning of the photo, it seems like a spot with lower clouds might be spinning, but it quickly gets disrupted, probably an effect from Hanley Mountain .

Especially when you see a gush of rain start to come over the mountain, a lower cloud becomes much more visible on the right side of the screen. Toward the end of the video, that cloud lowers further, becomes more round shaped and clearly starts to spin. 

That to me really looks like a wall cloud.  If a real meteorologist wants to weigh in and correct me, please do! If a tornado were to form, a wall cloud is where it would originate 

When my alleged wall cloud started spinning, that's when radar would have seen the tightening spin, and the National Weather Service would have been tempted to issue a tornado warning. But the spin was probably between scans and was very brief.

The video cuts off, but it looks like that gush of wind and rain. would have destroyed the spin on the cloud, ensuring that this supercell remained just a severe storm. Many wall clouds do not produce tornadoes, and here was an example of that. 

Still, with this storm, Vermont could have had its fourth tornado of the year. But, thankfully, it didn't happen. 

My alleged wall cloud was over the western edge of Proctor when the film was taken. There was tree damage in Proctor, but that was due to straight line winds. 

Also, notice the trees at the very bottom of the film. You can see the wind is blowing toward the storm. That supercell was ingesting warm, humid air to keep it alive. 

The storm went on to produce straight line wind damage on the north and east sides of Rutland and in Mendon. The storm appears to weaken a bit after crossing the green mountains. But it regrouped, and continued on as a spinning supercell through central and southern New Hampshire, leaving a trail of wind and hail damage behind.  

Again, Many thanks to Jeffrey Smith for permission to use the video!

 

Last Week's Austin, Texas Storm Super Wild, Super Weird

From Facebook, photo of damage at Austin Wildlife
Rescue after the massive supercell and oxymoronically
named large microburst in the city last week. 

 Texas is known for its, well, Texas sized storms.

But even by those standards, what hit the Austin, Texas area was absolutely wild.  I guess the "Keep Austin Weird" slogan applies to the weather there as well. 

A fast developing, giant supercell roared over the city on May 28.   It almost, but didn't quite produce a tornado. But it might as well have, given the damage it caused. There were also no other storms around it, just an isolated, big, bad one, Very bad,

It produces  one of the worst microbursts, one of the heaviest rainfall rates and some of the worst hail to ever hit Texas, and maybe the United States for that matter. 

MICROBURST

As the name implies, microbursts hit a relatively small area.  On average, they'll do their damage in a one to two mile diameter area. 

Microbursts, as noted,  are often are as dangerous as tornadoes, as the storm in Austin demonstrates.  Some microbursts carry wind gusts of 100 mph, which is the equivalent of an EF-1 tornado. (For comparison the tornado that hit in Middlebury, Vermont, in March, 2021, seriously damaging one home and causing lighter damage to several others, was an EF-1

The National Weather Service explains what causes these dangerous thunderstorm microbursts.:

Strong updrafts suspend a bunch water droplets in the upper portion of the storm. At some point, the updraft is no longer able to sustain all that stuff, so it lets them go like a clumsy waiter dropping a tray load of dishes. 

When the "tray load of dishes" hits the ground, all hell breaks loose, like it did in Austin, writ large.

The Austin area microburst, despite its name, was pretty huge.  

The damage path was about ten miles long, with a path ranging from one to 2.5 miles wide. Maximum sustained winds within the microburst were probably between 65 mph and 85 mph, with a few embedded higher gusts. The Austin-Bergstrom International Airport had a 77 mph gusts, reports KXAN.

REAR FLANK DOWNDRAFT

To make matters worse, the supercell had something called a rear flank downdraft in which winds reached up to 75 mph.  As KXAN reports:

The National Weather Service mapped out damage
from the May 28 supercell and big microburst.
Area in red is damage from the microburst, yellow
is from a real flank downdraft. The darker
the color, the worse the damage was.

"A rear flank downdraft is caused by pressure patterns within a supercell thunderstorm that force cool mid-level winds quickly down to the ground before getting pulled back into the rotating thunderstorm."

Rear flank downdrafts are common in in supercells, especially strong ones like that in and around Austin last week.

Like the microburst, the rear flank downdraft moved southeastward, in tandem with the microburst that was just to the north and east of the rear flank downdraft.

This downdraft and its 75 mph wind blew right through downtown Austin.  

DAMAGE

The wind, as you'd imagine, knocked down a lot of trees and power lines. About 180,000 residents lost power.  Winds of that speed tend not to seriously damage well-constructed homes, but it was enough to tear shingles off roofs and break windows  I'm sure several homes and other buildings suffered damage from falling trees

Windows and doors were reported broken by the wind at Austin-Bergstrom airport and the Texas State Capitol building in Austin. The canopy over gas pumps at an Austin service station collapsed onto cars beneath it whose owners were taking shelter from the hail. Thankfully, only minor injuries were reported. 

The largest oak tree in Austin's first Black cemetery toppled over and damaged several headstones.

The wind drove large hailstones sideways, damaging the siding on countless homes, Roofs, crops, trees and gardens were also blasted and wrecked.  

Intense flash flooding swept cars off roads and left at least one person dead. At least five others had to be rescued from submerged cars.

 The spot where the microburst first hits the ground is usually where the worst damage is.  In Austin's case, there might have been a train of microbursts, one after another. Or, the supercell thunderstorm that caused it had much more rain and hail to unload than most storms. 

It was also a single thunderstorm and not a line. While all hell was breaking loose on the north side of Austin and its suburbs, it was a pleasant evening with sunshine in the southern end of Austin.

Austin is weird. 

VIDEOS

Compilation of some of the storm scenes in Austin: As always, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that,

More images, mostly of the flooding from the microburst last week in Austin: Again, click on this link to view, or if you see image below click on that, 

 

This And That: A Vermont Spring Milestone, And Weird Weather Elsewhere

Animal tracks in the snow last evening in my
St. Albans, Vermont yard. Looks like they had been
sculpted by wind and sun during the day. 

 It was cold out there in Vermont this morning, as expected. 

But look at it this way, it'll very likely be a long time before you see weather this cold again.   

Temperatures were in the teens this morning, with some single digits in the cold hollows. It was below zero in some of the cold hollows Sunday morning. 

Unless something incredibly strange happens in April, these are the coldest temperatures you'll see until November or December. 

Don't get your spring mood on just yet. It's hard to do anyway with all the snow on the ground in most of Vermont. 

 Also, it pretty much always snows in late March and April. We probably won't have any more mega-snows, but I pretty much guarantee you'll see snow again before spring really arrives. 

Since the weather is quiet out there in Vermont today, I found some this and that weird things to talk about  elsewhere.

Kansas County Everything

Last evening, portions of a county in northwest Kansas managed to find themselves under a tornado warning, a blizzard warning and a dust storm advisory. The tornado threat arrived ahead of a cold front. Radar images definitely showed rotation in a severe thunderstorm, but it's unclear whether the tornado actually touched down not far from Oakley, Kansas.

The big thunderstorm's strong winds stirred up the dust.  Following the cold front, strong north winds and snow developed the blizzard later at night and this morning. 

The temperature in Oakley went from 69 degree Sunday afternoon to 24 degrees with a wind chill of 6 above early this morning. 

Talk about wait a minute and the weather will change. I don't think I want to live in northwest Kansas. Too much going on. 

Cuban Supercell

Supercell thunderstorms, those persistent, intense, big hail producing, usually rotating and sometimes tornado-producing storms, are a fixture in the United States Plains and Midwest the spring and early summer. They're common in other parts of the world too.

But not Cuba. However, a persistent supercell swept across parts or the island Friday night, surely causing wind and hail damage. However, we have no confirmed reports. Supercells are extremely rare in Cuba but they've happened before.

In 2019, a supercell spawned a tornado in Havana that killed 3 people and left extensive damage. Another strong tornado hit parts of Cuba back in 1940.

Friday night's storms also created rotating thunderstorms that threatened the Florida Keys with a risk of tornadoes, but none are known to have touched down. 

Heat Index Of 144 Degrees?

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is a hot city. You know, the famed beaches and all?

But recently, a section of Rio had a seemingly impossible 144 degree heat index.   The heat index takes into account both the heat and humidity  to give you a sense of how hot it feels.

A heat index that high is obviously extremely dangerous, and heat waves can cause multiple deaths, but I have no news as to what happened in and around Rio with this torrid weather. 

Much of Brazil, including Rio de Janeiro have had months of record breaking heat due to a combination of El Nino and climate change.