Landspouts and tornadoes

The quiz on the morning show involved a picture of a landspout. I believe I've mentioned on here what the difference is between a landspout and a "true" tornado, but since I said I'd talk about it on the blog, I'll go over it briefly once more. Tornadoes form when a broad portion of a thunderstorm is rotating (called the mesocyclone). Landspouts form from showers or thunderstorms that do not have existing rotation... what happens, essentially, is that some spin in the open air gets sucked upward into the cloud, forming a landspout. They form in a way very similar to that of waterspouts. Landspouts and waterspouts are technically classified as tornadoes, although the ways in which they form are very different.

Speaking of tornadoes, a severe weather outbreak occurred in the southern Plains yesterday. Lone Grove, Oklahoma, was battered by a half-mile wide tornado. Oklahoma City's KOCO has video of the destruction. Jeff Masters also discusses the storm in his weather blog; I'm sure he'll have additional insight tomorrow.