Tornado Outbreak Was Rare in Time and Location

The tornado outbreak last week (Nov. 16-18) struck me as unusual. The tornadoes were huge, fast-moving, late (after dark) and unusually far west. Research done by USTornadoes and AccuWeather.com bears this out. Here's a radar loop of some of the storms that I captured from GREarth software:

The storms were just incredible on radar -- long rotational and huge hail tracks. Yes, there's a second severe weather season in November (recall the 2013 outbreak I blogged about), but big (technically "major" tornadoes -- EF-3 or stronger) are typically earlier in the month and not typically found this far west. According to Wikipedia, there were three EF-3s, two EF-2s, and 41 weaker tornadoes.

The tornadoes were well within the NWS SPC's Slight Risk area issued by SPC early in the morning, and in the Enhanced (though it turns out it really should have been Moderate) from the 20Z update on Nov. 16.

Another oddity -- or is it a miracle? No injuries or deaths, especially considering (most of) the tornadoes hit after dark. The tornadoes stayed, for the most part, away from populated areas. Had the tracks been shifted slightly east, Dallas, Wichita and Oklahoma City could have had severe damage. Because of the rural tracks, damage pictures were hard to find the next day. Here's one impactful photo (used with permission from Charles Peek:

Because the tornadoes were after dark, it didn't immediately seem (the following morning) that there were any high quality photos of them -- only video captures from storm chaser footage when lightning happened to strike and illuminate the twisters. Later in the day though, some amazing photos started coming out from professional storm chasers who were using long-exposure still cameras, like this one (used with permission from Ryan Shepard Photography):

Here are some other amazing photos from that night:

Here are some of the rotational tracks of the storms: