"There are a lot of things in that storm that made me go, 'Wow,' " said Les Lemon, a co-author of the study and research associate meteorologist with the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
"Most meteorologists will see this kind of storm once in their lifetime."
A tornado 1.7 miles wide and measuring EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale virtually wiped Greensburg from the map shortly before 10 p.m. May 4, 2007. It killed 11 people and injured more than 50.
It was one of 22 tornadoes that touched down in southern and central Kansas from the same thunderstorm complex that night and early the next morning.
That's more tornadoes than initially thought, said Mike Umscheid, co-author of the study and the meteorologist who issued the "tornado emergency" warning that night for the Dodge City branch of the National Weather Service. A handful of small tornadoes rotating around larger twisters initially went unnoticed.
Four of the tornadoes were especially large.
The Greensburg tornado's peak winds were estimated at more than 200 mph based on damage in downtown Greensburg. Read more here
2 comments:
When there are small tornados swirling around a large tornado like that .... do the smaller tornados rotate in the opposite direction from the large tornado? You'd think that they probably would (think of gears....)
Just because I like to say these terms... the smaller tornadoes are called satellite tornadoes or suction vorticies.
Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about satellite tornadoes. As I recall, the going theories are that they tend to occur only in stronger tornadoes, and that they can produce extremely localized, incredible damage - moreso than the parent tornado.
To answer your question... I *think* they spin the same way as the parent tornado. Keep in mind that a true tornado is not an independent piece of the storm. It's attached to a larger, rotating section and both of those must rotate the same way (regardless of whether that's the "normal" way or the clockwise way).
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