V-Blog: PA Storms: Ron Bags A Good One!
UPDATE: You can see all Ron's videos and photos from this storm on the Photo Gallery. Also, a note on the photo shown below -- there is an interesting tubular object on the right which reminds me of a photo that I took during an awesome storm in NC in 1997. Note also the bright blue/green color behind the clouds, something I blogged about recently.
I've also posted a time-lapse video where I've compressed 1 minute, 11 seconds worth of Ron's footage into 2 seconds, note the "boiling" clouds.
ORIGINAL POST:
Local Storm Chaser Ron Shawley bagged a good storm this afternoon. I called him earlier when I saw storms approaching the Johnstown, PA area and recommended that he head to the top of the mountain near the county border on Route 22, where he would have a good view. In the video blog below I show stills and movies from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus (including a tornadic signature) from the time of his encounter with extremely high winds, possible cloud rotation, and lots of lightning. I also take a look at what the storms left behind: up to 5 inches of rain and Flood Warnings.
NOTE: THE VIDEO ABOVE MAY BE PRECEDED BY ADVERTISEMENTS ON AD-SUPPORTED SITES
- DOWNLOAD RADAR MOVIE (REFLECTIVITY)
- DOWNLOAD RADAR MOVIE (STORM-RELATIVE VELOCITY)
- MORE MAPS BELOW
Below is a photo Ron took of the undulating clouds as they began to rotate.
Ron measured a 51 mph gust earlier, before the big wind hit him so the storm almost surely met severe criteria, but no warning was issued by The NWS [JessePedia]. Here is the video shot during that time (with me on the phone):
Ron's location is plotted as an "X" on the images below. Just to recap, here's the velocity shot with the tornadic signature approaching Ron's location:
And here is Ron at the tail end of the heavy rain (Doppler-estimate with warnings shown):
