20:25 just looking at this you can learn so much. Watch the tail cloud intensify and grow in size as the updraft intensifies. From my understanding it's mostly the continuous, "stationary" and smooth features such as the position of the updraft and the cold forward and rear flank boundaries which drive the tornado. The cold outflow from the forward flank cuts under the warm environment in the south-east sector, causing an insane updraft close to the ground and also causing horizontal vorticity which gets sucked up by the updraft, tilting it vertically and eventually aggregating into a strong vortex that we call a tornado. 23:58 another great sequence, looks phenomenal! Great work Leigh Orf and team!
The SVC is very apparent in the recent drone footage of the Andover tornado which had perfectly clear viewing characteristics absent of precipitation. It's so strong that it can be seen ripping roofs off before they're really anywhere near the tornado vortex, and you can see this debris spiraling as it is pulled into the vortex, just as the simulation predicts.
What you refer to as the "parade of vortices", I am convinced was witnessed by Mark Imes and Shane Andra on highway 81 during El Reno 2013. Michael Lynn's video of the ghost train climbing up the base of the Moore 2013 tornado, as viewed from i44, had me speechless. Even though he was about ¾ of a mile behind it, the inflow was fierce.
Also: the idea of cool/cold air being the primary component of the tornadic vortex is at 1st glance counter-intuitive: the fact (not opinion!) that warm moist air drives these super-cell heat engines is well established, after all. BUT! When one considers that clouds only form in places where the ambient temperature is *below* the local dew point, & _then_ considers that most (nearly all) tornadoes show a condensation funnel (i.e., a rotating CLOUD) indicates that column of air MUST be cold, doesn't it? It seems simple after the fact, but like everyone else that particular thought has never occurred to me before seeing this work. Now all we need is the mechanism by which that cold air gets pushed/dragged/accelerated so very much. . . ^_^ Thanks again, Dr. Orf!
You make a great point here. Sometimes the most obvious of observations are those which are ignored the longest. There has to be cold columns of air present, which must be coming from the down-draft/'eye' at the center of major vortices.
Leigh, Hank sent me here. What incredible work you’ve done! If your models become field-verified then I think you’ve just advanced the research astronomically! I do have a question. Do you think that the SVC you describe is the “ghost train” that teams in the field have observed? I’m not aware of nor have I seen any observational data taken from within the train’s path, but if it’s not one in the same then do you think that they may work in tandem with each other? Also, does your model show a consistent positioning of the inflow jet, RFD, FFD, and the tail relative to the tornado? If not, does anybody know? I’m curious about how much the angular positioning might play into forecasting a particular tornado’s strength, motion, direction, or other characteristics. Thanks in advance, and again, great work Leigh! I’m really looking forward to seeing more of your discoveries.
I would say that the horizontal portion of the SVC is roughly located where the "ghost train" is, before it takes an abrupt turn upwards (where do you think all that screamin' ghosty air is going anyway :) With regards to positioning, I've seen cases where things get rotated a bit in a storm relative sense. What seems to be critical in these simulations is the rapid pressure drop between, say, the surface and 3-4 km above ground, embedded within the mesocyclone. This causes forces that result in air from the forward flank sweeping around the base of the mesocyclone, where an observer might say "RFD! RFD!" when really it's "Strong winds associated with a quasi-cyclostrophic pressure drop associated with SVC" (which does not roll of the tongue very well).
Some back-of-the-envelope results: If the full supercell simulation he references here took 4 weeks and was done in 2017, then we're looking at about the 2060's to start using the real-time probability simulations he dreams of. 4 weeks/simulation * 7 days/week * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour = 40,320 minutes/simulation We'll need at least 100 simulations, all completed within 10 minutes. Moore's Law is twice the computing speed every two years. So, we're looking at, 4*7*24*60*100/2^(X/2) Where X is the number of years after 2017. Solve for X, round up, and you get 38. 2017 plus 38 is 2055. Add another 10 years for various other factors, and we're at 2065. I'll still (barely) be working age by then, but I'd wager nobody in attendance at this meeting will be. We're still decades from tornado evaculations.
That video of the downburst @05:45 - 06:20 looks exactly like the experiment I did in grade school. I used a clear glass baking dish full of ~60 C fresh water to simulate the ambient atmosphere, and a basting syringe full of ~10 C salt-saturated water to simulate the downburst. The cold water was colored blue using food coloring, & I took pictures as the water from the syringe was squeezed into the baking dish, both perpendicular to the bottom, and at shallow & steep angles. Similarities: the downdraft vortices curled & spread exactly like the video you just showed, clearly producing the rapidly changing shear conditions that commercial airliners (used to?) have so many problems with. By contrast your simulated vortices appear to mostly hug the ground as closely as possible, while mine curled upwards much more readily as they spread out. Long story short: it's fun to see a modern computer model so closely mimic the results of a 6th grade science project. =D
All I can say is wow. So realistic. About the only feature that was not closely reproduced were the cauliflower protrusions of the CuNb, possibly as a result of the adopted resolution. Otherwise, very very close to what we see on storm chaser footage. Keep up with the excellent work. It could contribute to further life saving in future.
Wow. Your simulations are brilliant! In 1974 I watched the F5 approach and sweep through Xenia, Ohio from five miles away. The two central vortices wickedly corkscrewing around each other were visible at the bottom 1/3 of the tornado but were hidden higher up behind condensation around the two. A third large vortex circled outside the inner two. Outside that it was vortex on top of vortex on top of vortex just like your simulations, many of them the horizontal ones you colored gray in your sims, all of them ephemeral. Hanging out of mammatus at the back of the Xenia supercell were three large funnels about a mile apart which never touched down. I later learned they were high base funnels which never touch down. One swept right over the top of me and disappeared back up into the mammatus as I watched. It also displayed a double vortex in the form of a forked tail at the bottom of the funnel. My question for you is do you ever see these high base funnels form in your simulations from an elevation of mammatus clouds on the back (trailing side) of a supercell?
We have not seen this phenomenon in our simulations. I have to wonder how those vortices would be supported at that level, since the mammatus clouds are not (usually) co-located with a strong updraft. Do you have any images of this?
No images. Wish I had had a camera with me. I thought they might relate to the "chain of vortices" you mention in other presentations because they were in a line in that general area 2-5 miles away from the tornado except they were not pulled into the tornado. All three funnels raced along with the storm at 50 mph (Fujita's estimated speed for Xenia) but trailing the wall cloud/tornado and eventually dissipating as I watched. I see my mistake is calling the cotton ball clouds from which these 3 funnels hung mammatus when they were just the higher base clouds behind the wall cloud. Mammatus are very high up under the anvil. Sorry for the confusion. The three funnels I saw were not in the wall cloud with the tornado but higher in the base cloud behind the wall cloud. They stretched in a line running WSW from the wall cloud as the tornado moved NE. Again the funnel which dissipated directly over me was 5 miles away from the tornado based on Fujita's map. If you ever run a simulation where the chain of vortices aren't pulled into the tornado but persist 2-5 miles off its flank and dissipate on their own I think we might have an explanation for the three funnel clouds I saw trailing the Xenia tornado that day. Thanks for your reply and consideration.
@@longlakeshore To this day, I've yet to see a sky any way near as crazy as that day. I grew up in Miamisburg, about 15 miles SW of Xenia. The tornado first touched down a few miles East of us, heading N/NE towards Xenia, so I would have been on the W/SW side of the storm. The 2 things that stick out was the color of the light, the sky, and everything else. It was a sick green color. (Everyone called it babysh!t green). Even after getting back to the house, the light coming through the windows/curtains made it look that green color inside. Weird! The other thing was the clouds. I didn't know then what they were called, but later figured they were mammatus clouds. They were boiling! And spooky! And fast! Not so much the speed they moved with the storm (across the sky), but the speed and distance that each individual "cotton ball" would descend, and then ascend back up. I can't say there were funnels in it, but short, spinning individual little "blobs" (very small vortices?) would poke/drop out and either be re-absorbed by the "cotton balls", or just vanish. There was all kinds of weirdness going on up there. A few weeks later we were heading to a motocross race and drove through Xenia. 49 years later I can still see a 10 speed bicycle tightly wrapped around the very top of a bare telephone pole that was still standing. It wasn't bent in a U shape. It was wrapped AROUND the pole.
The demarcation between laminar and turbulent regions is interesting to me. It's also interesting that the inner part of the mesocyclone and tornado can lift air from the cool side of the storm high into the troposphere. The instability must be very high such that even the "cold" part of the storm has a positive CAPE.
The fact that Ford flank instead of rear flank is more integral in tornadoes doesn't surprise me a lot but nor do I want to question people who want to a hell of a lot more education than I did I like that you can see how different no time lapse makes how they really behave almost like the way any cloud of vapor would just on a larger scale I wish in my lifetime we could have real time Doppler because not until I was an adult was I able to see rotation on base reflectivity I can tell to look out for the bean shaped thunderstorm but not until I was an adult that I see what the hook represented and why the precipitation is mostly on the northern flank of the storm With this type of technology it should make it a lot easier to see
Amazing work! Would like to hear more information about the simulations that didn't produce significant tornado. Any different characteristic or variations on any plane in those certain supercells?
The air is electrically charged.. this is what i think adds to the helical nature of the air currents. Those vorticity models are really reminiscent of Birkeland currents in electrically charged plasmas..
some people feel the need to put Phd on their name so that everybody knows, perhaps to compensate for their lack of knowledge. However people like you don't find this necessary and I have a lot of respect for that ;)
@@LeighOrfsThunderstormResearch it's really the same principal as people posting on facebook their nice car because they want everyone to know, so good that you're not like that. also your research and model is really awesome :)
The cold pool animation was so cool. I used to do that with a static sink of luke warm water as a 8 year old. I put cold milk in it (slowly) instead of finishing the dishes. (don't ask I'm an Aquarius). Looked exactly the same.
After watching hundreds, even thousands of hours of tornado videos, there is evidence that tornadoes, even strong ones,can be created from an entirely different set of circumstances and conditions….maybe storm chasers need to look at all the facts….excellent weather videos!!!!
Amazing/fascinating stuff...I’m sharing with everyone I know (I have a few buddies that love this stuff almost as much as I do..)...hoping one day we can develop /engineer devices to alter the direction or intensity or lifespan of these monsters..maybe protect places like El Reno and Moore that are topographically, geographically and meteorologically challenged to always deal with these phenomena
Amazing work! Would like to hear more information about the simulations that didn't produce significant tornado. What characteristics did those supercells show? Any noticable variations?
What would you do to reduce the number of required calculations each time step and maintain the same number of grid points? I look at this as an engineer would, and from my background in flight dynamics I know one might linearize a model to do that with the exception of poorer results. Is the mathematics in your area of study available for that? I do not want to come off as condescending about the CM1 model, but it's in Fortran. I'm sure a lot of hard work went into that, and I am definitely not bashing anyone... I just can't help but think, as an outsider, if that could be refactored into a different language? Has anyone ever tried moving it to C/C++ before? You spoke also of finding a way to measure the SVC. You almost need something to fly into it and hold station at multiple grid points. Like a swarm of UAVs. Sounds ridiculous, but I'd try it... might be an FAA nightmare though.
I thought the political joke was funny... And rather poignant. Also, what if you had a bunch of little balloons filled with air and helium with little sensors on them? Then you could deploy these things in the areas you specifically want to study. Perhaps you could use different frequencies to show contrast in a rendered movie?
20:25 just looking at this you can learn so much. Watch the tail cloud intensify and grow in size as the updraft intensifies.
From my understanding it's mostly the continuous, "stationary" and smooth features such as the position of the updraft and the cold forward and rear flank boundaries which drive the tornado.
The cold outflow from the forward flank cuts under the warm environment in the south-east sector, causing an insane updraft close to the ground and also causing horizontal vorticity which gets sucked up by the updraft, tilting it vertically and eventually aggregating into a strong vortex that we call a tornado.
23:58 another great sequence, looks phenomenal!
Great work Leigh Orf and team!
Hank sent me here. Can't wait to see what the results are of your collab.
The SVC is very apparent in the recent drone footage of the Andover tornado which had perfectly clear viewing characteristics absent of precipitation.
It's so strong that it can be seen ripping roofs off before they're really anywhere near the tornado vortex, and you can see this debris spiraling as it is pulled into the vortex, just as the simulation predicts.
What you refer to as the "parade of vortices", I am convinced was witnessed by Mark Imes and Shane Andra on highway 81 during El Reno 2013. Michael Lynn's video of the ghost train climbing up the base of the Moore 2013 tornado, as viewed from i44, had me speechless. Even though he was about ¾ of a mile behind it, the inflow was fierce.
They don't yet really understand what causes this parade of mini vortices into the bottom of the supercell thunderstorm.
@@charlesmaeger6162 Well they're really a product of the streamwise vorticity current, but it's exact dynamics aren't known.
Another sub coming over from Pecos Hank. This is some interesting research.
Me too
The 2011 Cullman Alabama tornado had a persistent feature that reminds me of how the SVC looks in your simulations.
Saw you on Pecos Hank video. Fascinating work.
Also: the idea of cool/cold air being the primary component of the tornadic vortex is at 1st glance counter-intuitive: the fact (not opinion!) that warm moist air drives these super-cell heat engines is well established, after all. BUT! When one considers that clouds only form in places where the ambient temperature is *below* the local dew point, & _then_ considers that most (nearly all) tornadoes show a condensation funnel (i.e., a rotating CLOUD) indicates that column of air MUST be cold, doesn't it?
It seems simple after the fact, but like everyone else that particular thought has never occurred to me before seeing this work. Now all we need is the mechanism by which that cold air gets pushed/dragged/accelerated so very much. . . ^_^
Thanks again, Dr. Orf!
You make a great point here. Sometimes the most obvious of observations are those which are ignored the longest. There has to be cold columns of air present, which must be coming from the down-draft/'eye' at the center of major vortices.
Leigh, Hank sent me here. What incredible work you’ve done! If your models become field-verified then I think you’ve just advanced the research astronomically!
I do have a question. Do you think that the SVC you describe is the “ghost train” that teams in the field have observed? I’m not aware of nor have I seen any observational data taken from within the train’s path, but if it’s not one in the same then do you think that they may work in tandem with each other?
Also, does your model show a consistent positioning of the inflow jet, RFD, FFD, and the tail relative to the tornado? If not, does anybody know? I’m curious about how much the angular positioning might play into forecasting a particular tornado’s strength, motion, direction, or other characteristics.
Thanks in advance, and again, great work Leigh! I’m really looking forward to seeing more of your discoveries.
I would say that the horizontal portion of the SVC is roughly located where the "ghost train" is, before it takes an abrupt turn upwards (where do you think all that screamin' ghosty air is going anyway :) With regards to positioning, I've seen cases where things get rotated a bit in a storm relative sense. What seems to be critical in these simulations is the rapid pressure drop between, say, the surface and 3-4 km above ground, embedded within the mesocyclone. This causes forces that result in air from the forward flank sweeping around the base of the mesocyclone, where an observer might say "RFD! RFD!" when really it's "Strong winds associated with a quasi-cyclostrophic pressure drop associated with SVC" (which does not roll of the tongue very well).
What an awesome reply! Thanks so much for educating us!
Some back-of-the-envelope results:
If the full supercell simulation he references here took 4 weeks and was done in 2017, then we're looking at about the 2060's to start using the real-time probability simulations he dreams of.
4 weeks/simulation
* 7 days/week
* 24 hours/day
* 60 minutes/hour
= 40,320 minutes/simulation
We'll need at least 100 simulations, all completed within 10 minutes.
Moore's Law is twice the computing speed every two years.
So, we're looking at,
4*7*24*60*100/2^(X/2)
Where X is the number of years after 2017.
Solve for X, round up, and you get 38. 2017 plus 38 is 2055. Add another 10 years for various other factors, and we're at 2065.
I'll still (barely) be working age by then, but I'd wager nobody in attendance at this meeting will be.
We're still decades from tornado evaculations.
That video of the downburst @05:45 - 06:20 looks exactly like the experiment I did in grade school. I used a clear glass baking dish full of ~60 C fresh water to simulate the ambient atmosphere, and a basting syringe full of ~10 C salt-saturated water to simulate the downburst. The cold water was colored blue using food coloring, & I took pictures as the water from the syringe was squeezed into the baking dish, both perpendicular to the bottom, and at shallow & steep angles.
Similarities: the downdraft vortices curled & spread exactly like the video you just showed, clearly producing the rapidly changing shear conditions that commercial airliners (used to?) have so many problems with. By contrast your simulated vortices appear to mostly hug the ground as closely as possible, while mine curled upwards much more readily as they spread out.
Long story short: it's fun to see a modern computer model so closely mimic the results of a 6th grade science project. =D
All I can say is wow. So realistic. About the only feature that was not closely reproduced were the cauliflower protrusions of the CuNb, possibly as a result of the adopted resolution. Otherwise, very very close to what we see on storm chaser footage. Keep up with the excellent work. It could contribute to further life saving in future.
Wow. Your simulations are brilliant! In 1974 I watched the F5 approach and sweep through Xenia, Ohio from five miles away. The two central vortices wickedly corkscrewing around each other were visible at the bottom 1/3 of the tornado but were hidden higher up behind condensation around the two. A third large vortex circled outside the inner two. Outside that it was vortex on top of vortex on top of vortex just like your simulations, many of them the horizontal ones you colored gray in your sims, all of them ephemeral.
Hanging out of mammatus at the back of the Xenia supercell were three large funnels about a mile apart which never touched down. I later learned they were high base funnels which never touch down. One swept right over the top of me and disappeared back up into the mammatus as I watched. It also displayed a double vortex in the form of a forked tail at the bottom of the funnel.
My question for you is do you ever see these high base funnels form in your simulations from an elevation of mammatus clouds on the back (trailing side) of a supercell?
We have not seen this phenomenon in our simulations. I have to wonder how those vortices would be supported at that level, since the mammatus clouds are not (usually) co-located with a strong updraft. Do you have any images of this?
No images. Wish I had had a camera with me. I thought they might relate to the "chain of vortices" you mention in other presentations because they were in a line in that general area 2-5 miles away from the tornado except they were not pulled into the tornado. All three funnels raced along with the storm at 50 mph (Fujita's estimated speed for Xenia) but trailing the wall cloud/tornado and eventually dissipating as I watched.
I see my mistake is calling the cotton ball clouds from which these 3 funnels hung mammatus when they were just the higher base clouds behind the wall cloud. Mammatus are very high up under the anvil. Sorry for the confusion.
The three funnels I saw were not in the wall cloud with the tornado but higher in the base cloud behind the wall cloud. They stretched in a line running WSW from the wall cloud as the tornado moved NE. Again the funnel which dissipated directly over me was 5 miles away from the tornado based on Fujita's map.
If you ever run a simulation where the chain of vortices aren't pulled into the tornado but persist 2-5 miles off its flank and dissipate on their own I think we might have an explanation for the three funnel clouds I saw trailing the Xenia tornado that day.
Thanks for your reply and consideration.
@@longlakeshore To this day, I've yet to see a sky any way near as crazy as that day. I grew up in Miamisburg, about 15 miles SW of Xenia. The tornado first touched down a few miles East of us, heading N/NE towards Xenia, so I would have been on the W/SW side of the storm. The 2 things that stick out was the color of the light, the sky, and everything else. It was a sick green color. (Everyone called it babysh!t green). Even after getting back to the house, the light coming through the windows/curtains made it look that green color inside. Weird! The other thing was the clouds. I didn't know then what they were called, but later figured they were mammatus clouds. They were boiling! And spooky! And fast! Not so much the speed they moved with the storm (across the sky), but the speed and distance that each individual "cotton ball" would descend, and then ascend back up. I can't say there were funnels in it, but short, spinning individual little "blobs" (very small vortices?) would poke/drop out and either be re-absorbed by the "cotton balls", or just vanish. There was all kinds of weirdness going on up there. A few weeks later we were heading to a motocross race and drove through Xenia. 49 years later I can still see a 10 speed bicycle tightly wrapped around the very top of a bare telephone pole that was still standing. It wasn't bent in a U shape. It was wrapped AROUND the pole.
You should train a neural net on what conditions lead to what or something
Great work 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Just swinging by after seeing u with Hank!!! Subbed.
The demarcation between laminar and turbulent regions is interesting to me. It's also interesting that the inner part of the mesocyclone and tornado can lift air from the cool side of the storm high into the troposphere. The instability must be very high such that even the "cold" part of the storm has a positive CAPE.
The fact that Ford flank instead of rear flank is more integral in tornadoes doesn't surprise me a lot but nor do I want to question people who want to a hell of a lot more education than I did
I like that you can see how different no time lapse makes how they really behave almost like the way any cloud of vapor would just on a larger scale I wish in my lifetime we could have real time Doppler because not until I was an adult was I able to see rotation on base reflectivity I can tell to look out for the bean shaped thunderstorm but not until I was an adult that I see what the hook represented and why the precipitation is mostly on the northern flank of the storm
With this type of technology it should make it a lot easier to see
Really looking forward to you cracking this model!
Amazing work! Would like to hear more information about the simulations that didn't produce significant tornado. Any different characteristic or variations on any plane in those certain supercells?
I would love to make some probe of some kind, but am too inexperienced
The air is electrically charged.. this is what i think adds to the helical nature of the air currents. Those vorticity models are really reminiscent of Birkeland currents in electrically charged plasmas..
By recommendation of Pecos Hank. REALLY interesting!
Leigh, do you think that ground water could play a part in tornado formation?
some people feel the need to put Phd on their name so that everybody knows, perhaps to compensate for their lack of knowledge. However people like you don't find this necessary and I have a lot of respect for that ;)
To be fair, there are a lot of doofuses with PhD after their name... but thanks, .... I think.... ;)
@@LeighOrfsThunderstormResearch it's really the same principal as people posting on facebook their nice car because they want everyone to know, so good that you're not like that. also your research and model is really awesome :)
The cold pool animation was so cool. I used to do that with a static sink of luke warm water as a 8 year old. I put cold milk in it (slowly) instead of finishing the dishes. (don't ask I'm an Aquarius). Looked exactly the same.
Should do the QLCS EF3 in El Reno
Thats hard because theres lots of downdraft rij bookend vortex and mo
Wow Great Vid From KS Great vids.
40:41 reminds me of some kind of gearing effect (if that makes sense)
hank sent me here
After watching hundreds, even thousands of hours of tornado videos, there is evidence that tornadoes, even strong ones,can be created from an entirely different set of circumstances and conditions….maybe storm chasers need to look at all the facts….excellent weather videos!!!!
18:17 Just so you go to the 3rd sim I believe.
This one is cool too. 46:03
Amazing/fascinating stuff...I’m sharing with everyone I know (I have a few buddies that love this stuff almost as much as I do..)...hoping one day we can develop /engineer devices to alter the direction or intensity or lifespan of these monsters..maybe protect places like El Reno and Moore that are topographically, geographically and meteorologically challenged to always deal with these phenomena
Amazing work! Would like to hear more information about the simulations that didn't produce significant tornado. What characteristics did those supercells show? Any noticable variations?
Does anyone try to do this in real-time? That's basically where this is all needing to go.
What would you do to reduce the number of required calculations each time step and maintain the same number of grid points? I look at this as an engineer would, and from my background in flight dynamics I know one might linearize a model to do that with the exception of poorer results. Is the mathematics in your area of study available for that? I do not want to come off as condescending about the CM1 model, but it's in Fortran. I'm sure a lot of hard work went into that, and I am definitely not bashing anyone... I just can't help but think, as an outsider, if that could be refactored into a different language? Has anyone ever tried moving it to C/C++ before?
You spoke also of finding a way to measure the SVC. You almost need something to fly into it and hold station at multiple grid points. Like a swarm of UAVs. Sounds ridiculous, but I'd try it... might be an FAA nightmare though.
Hank sent me here
I thought the political joke was funny... And rather poignant.
Also, what if you had a bunch of little balloons filled with air and helium with little sensors on them? Then you could deploy these things in the areas you specifically want to study. Perhaps you could use different frequencies to show contrast in a rendered movie?