re: Severe Weather 4/19 Thread | Multiple Tornadoes in Midwest | At least 2 fatalities

quote:

---

Is that a Fujiwhara effect with 2 tornadoes?

---

Maybe, kind of. What we had was a setup that favored splitting supercells. The chance for deviant motion with those type storms is much higher. Couple that with a cyclical supercell that is going through the process faster than normal and you have a storm that is trying to split, but the newly-formed meso takes over too quickly for the split to happen. The new meso forms, the old one (and the original tor) fricks off northward at a rapid pace, and the new meso pulls the storm back together. What made this storm extraordinary was how many times it was able to efficiently go through that process.

The primary and secondary mesos (and possible tornadoes) could play off of each other similar to a fujiwara effect, but not necessarily that. It is going to be very interesting to see the actual tracks of these plotted out and how often that storm had two tors down at once.

Also, it was refreshing to see that no chasers were rolled by this one, because it was certainly a dangerous storm capable of doing just that. Maybe they learned some lessons.