Help. What the @%&! is this?

[MJ Poore]

A nameless member of the public emailed this into the South African Weather Service. Crickey! I first thought it was a mega dust devil. Then I looked at the instability on the day in question, which was very high. Maybe it is a tornado, but I can't see the parent storm here. Could it even be a monster landspout, or is it a tornado? Any thoughts anybody??



http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i133/mjpoore/Jan84pm-darkened.jpg

[Danny Neal]

its definately not smoke so we can rule that out, ive never seen a dust devil like that before not to say it cant happen but that looks to "violent" to be your run of the mill dust devil, looks like its under some Cu as per the background, kinda looks like a mostly sunny day with towering Cu, if i had a logical guess i think it would be a landspout, again if you knew if there was a storm around there then maybe maybe it could be a weak tornado, do you have anymore info or can you obtain it? that might be able to get to the bottom of it...but judging by this pic alone, i would tend to lean toward a landspout, are they common around there??

[Caleb Lawrence]

Do you have any idea what the soil is like near where this happened? If the soil, sand or dirt isn't of a dark variety, I'd be willing to bet it was smoke. However, there does look like some outward circulation near the very base of the vortex in question...it still looks like a massive amount of smoke to me, though. If the fire was large or hot enough, it's enough to cause a dust devil appearance due to the updraft of heat (well, that's a big duh). I believe Mike Umscheid took some pictures of a large field fire that resembled a tornado some months ago.

[scott r currens]

The vortex and the hillside in the background are in a large shadow. Looking at the cu on the right and left side of the vortex it appears that there is precipitation (hook echo?) between the vortex and the cu.

Given the instability, large shadow (from deep moist convection) and precip near the vortex I am 97% sure this is a tornado. The next question is, "What type of tornado is this, mesocyclone or non-mesocyclone?” If I had to guess I'd say it is most likely a mesocyclone tornado but I'm on 65% confident in that answer.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

[MJ Poore]

I don't think it's a petrol fire or anything like that, smoke drifts. The individual who emailed described it as a tornado (not in English). He or she has not returned any contact or name. Even the area is vague, just south of a place called Heidelberg, outside Johannesburg. It's just bush out there.

The only other clue was some metadata on the photo, it was taken on 8 Jan 2005 at 4pm. Here's the local sounding...could easily be a nado with conditions.



http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i133/mjpoore/pretoriaskew.gif

[Dan Robinson]

Do they have more pictures? A sequence of images would shed some light on motion/dynamics.

[B Ozanne]

Can anyone explain why its so dark?

If you are going to rule out smoke, I'd like to hear the reasoning behind that. Smoke doesn't always "drift," especially when it is being sucked into a vortex it's parent fire created.

[Andrew Herron]

Well, the dirt could be dark. Even with the background hill in the shadow, the dirt is still darker than normal. Also, if you look at the top right, you can see a dark outline, showing me a vortex. In the upper half you can also faintly see a criss-cross of the "dirt", again showing a vortex.

[Dick McGowan]

How about a fire/smoke whirl? Mike Umscheid has some good photos from last year of some:

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/stormchase/chase05/2005jun30/

[B Ozanne]

How about a fire/smoke whirl? Mike Umscheid has some good photos from last year of some:

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/stormchase/chase05/2005jun30/

That's pretty much what a bunch of us have been getting at.

[Dick McGowan]

That's pretty much what a bunch of us have been getting at.

O rly? Because I only see one person stating it could be smoke, others calling it dirt, and one calling it a possible tornado.

Perhaps some outflow boundary was nearby.

[B Ozanne]

A bunch of us, meaning me. First thing I thought when I saw that photo was smoke. Looks way to dark to be dirt. Not that dirt isn't dark, but when it is dry and you are throwing it into the air it isn't that dark.

Now, it obviously isn't just a smoke plume rising into the air. It has rotation, just like a dust devil.

[Brian Emfinger]

I definately think its smoke with some rotation from the intense heat as has already been alluded to. Looking at some soil maps..there doesnt appear to be much black soil in South Africa. Mostly it appears to be arid with reddish soils.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/y5998e/y5998e03.jpg < soil wetness

http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/y5998e/y5998e04.jpg < soil type map

There do appear to be some areas further south from Heidelberg (if it was taken there) that do have black soils (vertisols) but the general area in question it doesnt seem possible.

It really looks like smoke to me.

[Danny Neal]

i have retracted my statement about not being smoke after lookin at mikes pictures, for the reason that i thought a "smokenado" couldnt be that "perfectly symmetrical" i have seen many many fires and a couple of vortices like this but they were all disorganized and tilted off in the direction of the wind, i wish i had pics to show you, but after looking at mikes and looking at this, it looks relatively similar, the only problem i have is like in mikes picture there is a large fire there, here there is possibly a grass or brush fire, so i have kind of a hard time believing the WHOLE fire is caught up into a vortex.......thoughts? denials? anything?

[Andrew Herron]

Would the fire heat give the instability an umph?

[Danny Neal]

i think its possible had the fire been large enough, i have a video on different vortices and in one video it said if the fire is large enough it creates its own air mass and even its own thunderstorms

[Dan Robinson]

We need more pictures. I'm skeptical about a tornado, but something producing that much smoke should have some flames or at least a glow from the fire visible.

[MatthewCarman]

What about the darker clouds on the top left then? There could be a thunderstorm we cant see near by.

[scott r currens]

I guess it's possible but I don't see any evidence of a fire.

The vortex looks a lot like this tornado (http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~doswell/a_tornado/nofun.JPG) on Doswell's site.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

[Brian Emfinger]

i think the hill in between is hiding the flames.. you dont have to have flames really high to get that much smoke.

[MatthewCarman]

I see dark clouds to the top left and see rotation with a big vortex. (Did I say that right?) I see no evidence that this is a fire unless the flames/red glow is below the hill. In any case this to me looks to much like a tornado.

Scott Currens shows a good example of a tornado look alike.

[Jeff Miller]

The reality is there is simply insignificant information to come to any sort of a logical conclusion to the exact nature of this phenomenon.

We will need to obtain, as has been previously stated, either a series of photographs of the event, the EXACT date and time that this occurred, and/or obtain a wider shot of the entire structure of the event. At the present time with the singular photograph that we observe, all we will continue to do is to guess and, to be honest, throwing a dart blindfolded would yield just as good a guess.

Looking solitarily at this picture, it can go any direction. There is what *appears* to be a cloud base, albeit high, above the area of interest. As what was previously stated, the rich dark material indeed suggests smoke so we can't rule anything out or conclusively prove anything. What I will say with certainty is that this photograph is, indeed, fascinating, and I am hoping somebody will come out with more information so we can figure this bad boy out and rest this case.

[MJ Poore]

I am afraid its all the info I have. The sand in the area is light red, but there are coal mine spoil dumps in that general area as well which could give it the dark color. I think the fire devil idea is interesting, but it would need to be a petrol fire to create that colour, grass or bush burns white smoke.

It is indeed mysterious. I am tending toward a nado given the instability on the day. But if it is a fire devil, it's a very big one.

[Andrea Griffa]

I see dark clouds to the top left and see rotation with a big vortex. (Did I say that right?) I see no evidence that this is a fire unless the flames/red glow is below the hill. In any case this to me looks to much like a tornado.

Scott Currens shows a good example of a tornado look alike.

It's what I was thinking about before making a contrast to the picture.

Guys, if you see the top of the vortex it seems that there's a large funnel but with more contrast you see that that isn't a funnel but it's probably smoke (taking apart the dark color of the vortex that it's more similar to the smoke color than dust color).

[scott r currens]

The individual who emailed described it as a tornado (not in English). He or she has not returned any contact or name. Even the area is vague, just south of a place called Heidelberg, outside Johannesburg. It's just bush out there.

The only other clue was some metadata on the photo, it was taken on 8 Jan 2005 at 4pm.

What did the South African Weather Service say about the report? Were there storms in the area that day?

The person that took this picture had an excellent view the vortex. They could see the situation evolve in time and space as well as see everything that is outside the image. They reported is as a tornado! I just don't see anything in the image that says otherwise.

I don't think this is a fire vortex because there isn't any smoke rising outside of the vortex. I have never seen a fire vortex that ingests all of the fire's
smoke into the vortex. Look at Mike U's fire vortex (http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/1791-2/DSC4983.jpg)

It would be nice if we could get a radar or satellite loop so we could at least know if thunderstorms occured on 8 Jan 2005.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

[John Diel]

I think I'm going to chime in here. Just for grins and giggles as it were.

I really think we're looking at a vortex of some type. Either a very large dust devil or a tornadic vortex. Here's why:

Looking at the conditions posted, you have all the elements needed for a tornadic thunderstorm. Looking at the hill just below the vortex, the ground/soil appears to be the color of the dust in the cloud we see. The sides show the smaller debris thrown out in similar vortices we see in Western Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Just because we don't see a condensation funnel extending further up, does not mean that it doesn't exist. What we can't see is the parent storm structure. The only clues that there is sufficient instability to produce a TOR are the cloud formation we can see in the background and the information posted. This looks like farmland and yes, there is a lot of red dirt in Oklahoma, but we DO see dark debris fields like this, when a vortex moves over a cultivated area. The color will change with the soil being ingested and blown around. This can change from field to field. It can change drastically within a mile.

Here's why I don't think it's smoke:

It's certainly not a grass fire, as there is no surrounding smoke or flame over a large front. It could possibly be a dust devil moving over a tire fire, but we still don't see associated flame. A fire to produce that much smoke to be ingested into a vortex, would have had to be burning for a period of time and we would see a smoke column associated with the vortex. There would also most likely be "drifting" smoke from the fire from the prevailing wind fields and the conditions that produce the dust devil vortex to begin with.

As with everyone else though, We really need to know more and "see" more about the conditions present at the time. However, that's my SWAG.

John Diel

[scott r currens]

If that is a dust devil it is in the top 1% of all dust devils. You can use the power poles and trees in the forground to get an idea of its size.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

[Paul Townsend]

Definitely a tornadic vortex. It has the look of dirt/debris versus the look of smoke. Both could be the same black color, but this has the look of the more coarse dirt/debris entrainment versus the finer look of smoke particle entrainment. Plus, it looks strikingly similar to the Ash Valley, KS tornado of the 1970's (I believe 1974) that was famously captured on 8mm film. And its size rules out dust devil formation.

[MJ Poore]

What did the South African Weather Service say about the report? Were there storms in the area that day?

The person that took this picture had an excellent view the vortex. They could see the situation evolve in time and space as well as see everything that is outside the image. They reported is as a tornado! I just don't see anything in the image that says otherwise.

I don't think this is a fire vortex because there isn't any smoke rising outside of the vortex. I have never seen a fire vortex that ingests all of the fire's
smoke into the vortex. Look at Mike U's fire vortex (http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/1791-2/DSC4983.jpg)

It would be nice if we could get a radar or satellite loop so we could at least know if thunderstorms occured on 8 Jan 2005.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

They say it's a nado. They only keep the radar loops for a week. So there were no radar pics from the time. They are very used to all sorts of tornado reports and generally the only time they do site investigations is when there is loss of life or it's a major urban area that takes the hit. I did an investigation for them in January this year where an F3 blew a small village away in the middle of nowhere, 1 death, 25 injuries, it barely even made the news. There was another report recently, for example, where an electricity utility company phoned up to say that 2 twenty ton pylons out in the bush got picked and thrown about 50 meters. The forcasters looked at the radar loop and there was supercell there, so yep, that was a tornado of some sort drilling away in wilderness.

[Pat Lawrence]

For those interested in LARGE full disk meteosat images for this date they are available here for free at nearly full resolution:
http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/

The S. African storms show up.

You have to do a free registration (don't worry it is a painless registration:)).

It is a great archive that goes back ~6 years and includes all images received by the Dundee, UK station -6-hour time frames.

I would have posted the pics myself, but I wasn't sure if it is OK to post them on the forum. They are so big they would have messed up the thread anyway..

Pat

Edit: I was just looking through the links for the date mentioned, and imagery is available every three hours if one goes into the 1st generation Meteosat archive. Water vapor is all that is available for the 3 hourlies, however.

[MJ Poore]

Useful site. thanks.

[Pat Lawrence]

They do a nice servce to the public, no doubt. Another archive link a forum friend sent my way:
http://www.satmos.meteo.fr/cgi-bin/qkl_sat/quicklook.pl

Not the same resolution, but the site is easy to navigate and the images are, perhaps, easier to deal with.

Pat

Enjoyed this post, BTW!

[Billy Griffin]

Just a theory here, but quite possibly a very intense "gustnado." Expected dry plains environment of S. Africa could also explain the abundance of dust.

Cu looks pretty high-based, and no real heavy precip core that I can see. Perhaps, could this resemble some of the gustnadoes or landspout-type events we see in eastern Colorado / west TX panhandle (high plains)? Throw in a freshly-tilled field or the tyical terrain down there, and you'd certainly get enough dust kicked up.

Just a thought anyway.

[MJ Poore]

Just a theory here, but quite possibly a very intense "gustnado." Expected dry plains environment of S. Africa could also explain the abundance of dust.

Cu looks pretty high-based, and no real heavy precip core that I can see. Perhaps, could this resemble some of the gustnadoes or landspout-type events we see in eastern Colorado / west TX panhandle (high plains)? Throw in a freshly-tilled field or the tyical terrain down there, and you'd certainly get enough dust kicked up.

Just a thought anyway.

It's not that dry around here in summer in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area. It's grassland similiar to east Kansas/Oklahoma from what I've seen of it. But yep there are a lot of dust devils around end of winter, but more towards the Kalahari up north toward Botswana which is closer to what you're describing.

I thought it was a devil initially as well, but can a devil get so big??

I think it seems to have been a stormy afternoon looking a data.