Saturday, May 10, 2008

Tornado Warning Marshall County, MS

Marshall County, MS under the gun...why, you might ask, am I focusing on that county in Mississippi? My wife's grandmother lives there along with several other of her relatives.

~More in a bit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, I am in Cookeville,are we going to have to weather these bad storms coming thru? Also, The bad weather down south said to be a bookend vortice? Exactly what is that, would love to know. Thanks,
Chas

Michael Detwiler said...

Hi Chas:

Sorry I didn't get your message until just now. I'll give you the AMS version of the answer...

book-end vortices—
Mesoscale vortices observed at the ends of a line segment of convective cells, usually cyclonic on the northern end of the system and anticyclonic on the southern end, for an environment of westerly vertical wind shear (in the Northern Hemisphere).
The vortices are generally strongest between 2 and 4 km above ground level, but may extend from near the surface to about 8 km above ground level. They have been observed at scales between 10 and 200 km, and often have lifetimes of several hours. In extreme cases, the larger cyclonic vortices may become balanced with the Coriolis force and last for several days. See also bow echo.

bow echo
A bow-shaped line of convective cells that is often associated with swaths of damaging straight-line winds and small tornadoes.
Key structural features include an intense rear-inflow jet impinging on the core of the bow, with book-end or line-end vortices on both sides of the rear-inflow jet, behind the ends of the bowed convective segment. Bow echoes have been observed with scales between 20 and 200 km, and often have lifetimes between 3 and 6 h. At early stages in their evolution, both cyclonic and anticyclonic book-end vortices tend to be of similar strength, but later in the evolution, the northern cyclonic vortex often dominates, giving the convective system a comma-shaped appearance.

I hope this makes sense!! :)

Oh, and obviously, the storms settled down ALOT when they got here...just some lightning and rumbles of thunder. Thanks for commenting.

AMS

AMS
Member-American Meteorological Society