Air pressure reading within a tornado

[Joel Wright]

Has anyone ever theorized just how low the adjusted sea level air pressure drops to within a tornado?

Is the pressure lowest right at the surface, or is it higher aloft?


I did a little looking around on the web, but didn't really find very much info.

[Jeff Snyder]

Tim Samaras's probes have captured some data on this... I believe his Manchester, SD, deployment recorded a 100mb pressure deficit as the tornado moved over the probe. Could throw some numbers into a cyclostrophic flow equation to come up with an 'idealized' pressure deficit for a given wind/flow field I suppose.

[Karen Politte]

Joel -

Been there done that! :lol: :roll: Sorry...... :lol:

Here are some June 24th 2003 resources:

http://www.stormskies.com/June24th2003INDEXPg.htm

http://www.stormskies.com/June24th2003.htm

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/storms/tor0624...ras/samaras.php (http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/storms/tor062403/samaras/samaras.php)

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/storms/tor062403/index.php

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0404/feature1/

Enjoy! What a day.....

KR

[Robert Edmonds]

Here's one more good link...

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/74267.pdf

[Joel Wright]

Wow, that was some interesting information. Thanks for the links guys!

A 100mb drop is unbelievable. I guess I can see how that may cause the "ear popping" that is sometimes reported by tornado victoms.