Dissecting Rare Montana Tornado Video
Unless you've been under a rock today you've probably seen this video (or this version with a shakier camera showing the same twister from a different angle):
This was in Billings, Montana yesterday. A few points you might not hear from the media or the masses redistributing the video:
1. This is not a large or particularly strong tornado.According to the NWS it was an EF-1 or EF-2. That should scare you because it's doing quite a bit of destruction. If it were stronger, it would also be picking up a lot of dirt and dust and would obscure itself from view, or would be unrecognizable as a tornado as close as the videographer was in the video above anyway.
2. This is proof that no matter how much you warn people, you can't save everyone. I'm amazed that people are still driving through the debris as it's falling this close to the tornado (near the end you can confirm that it's hitting the road). None of the cars driving past the videographer should be there. They should have stopped and turned around.
3. The storm may have been "too close" to the local NEXRAD radar. As a result, meteorologists couldn't get a good look at the storm because the radar can see less angles of the storm the closer it gets (you can see the "cone of silence" where the radar can't see at all on the image below):
This may have been why a Tornado Warning wasn't issued until after a spotter called in sighting the twister (although it is not unusual for a spotter report to generate warnings). Below is a map showing the spotter report and associated warnings (yellow are Severe Thunderstorm).
4. The media is calling this tornado "rare." Is it? In short, yes. This article says that the last EF-2 "tornado to strike in Yellowstone County was July 2, 1958." Here are some other stats from NCDC: There have been 17 tornadoes in the county since 1950; the last F-1 was in 1991. There was an F-0 in Billings in 2003, so tornadoes are not unheard of there but damaging ones are rare. There have been over 350 tornadoes in the state.
5. Did you catch the power flash and lightning strike? Watch around 25 seconds into the video, you'll see a "power flash" at right. These happen when a tornado rips up power lines or poles that contain transformers, or substations. This in fact may have been a (transformer explosion).
Shortly afterward you see a lightning strike, which appears to be close, but over 7 seconds of audio is without the thunder so it was over a mile away.
Check this out from multiple angles. Yet another video shows yet a third, aerial angle of the tornado (probably from a TV station webcam) with what I assume is the same lightning strike:
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