What kind of cloud can spawn a tornado

She specializes in home, garden, environmental, and green living topics. And there was no storm even nearby. I saw a cloud the other day that I have never before seen, especially here in California, home to boring weather. In some ways it resembles your description of a scud, and in others a funnel. It did not contact the ground.

It was highly structured, evolving right before my eyes over the course of a few minutes, from a distinct narrow funnel hanging from the cloud base then fattening into a thick straight-sided cylinder. It was incompletely connected to the cloud base above it. It was rotating fairly rapidly—no time lapse needed in order to see this—but certainly not as fast as a tornado. It eventually began to breakup, stopped rotating, and turned into ordinary low-hanging scud.

The weather system it was associated with was not conducive to producing tornadoes. Clouds were a moderate collection of cumulus, some thick and dark, most light and fluffy, that had produced a few showers as they moved north. The system simply did not have the strength, density, size, nor organization necessary for a true tornado. The landscape is a wide flat valley between mountain ranges the Central Valley of California , and the day was very warm and humid.

This system never did develop into a real storm. The time was early afternoon, right about the time when summer temps start to get hot. This cloud puzzles me because it certainly was not a tornado, nor even the threat of one, but it had definite bounded structure and rotated, so it was not entirely scud either. Is there some kind of weird hybrid? I saw one of those things you were talking about right over my neighborhood in Pennsylvania, and it formed gust as quickly pun intended. It was shaped like a giant can of canned tomato sauce, with extra can, but shorter ish.

Some lightning was coming out of it and going back into it, lighting MY strange, rotating cloud up. My phone was able to record it, but I took so many other picture and videos that I think I had to delete it. I forget the exact date and time, but I think it was last year.

I then looked at this comment and found that I am not the only one who saw a cloud like the one I found. This sounds like the stereotypical wall cloud. A google search can confirm this though. I take many pics of clouds, one of my favorite past times. I often see the Tail Clouds and did think that they are makings of a tornado.

I live in central California and do not experience being in fear of tornados, but you never know, right!?! I look forward to reading more articles by you Amber Kanuckel. This article and photos were so good I figured Jaime was the author till I got to the bottom.

Thanks Amber, you knocked it out of the park! It is my understanding that in order to be a tornado, it must touch the ground. Since I grew up in one of the Tornado Alleys, I do have a question. If it does not reach the ground, then it is called a funnel cloud. Debris and dust are kicked up where the narrow end of the funnel touches the ground. Tornadoes, also called twisters, are columns of air rotating dangerously fast.

The air is in motion because of the difference in pressure between the center of the tornado very low pressure and the outer edge of the tornado high pressure. Some tornadoes are narrow, only feet 75 meters across where they touch the ground. Other, massive tornadoes can be up to two miles across. Multiple studies have shown that the plumes were comparable to those of a moderate volcanic eruption and remained in the atmosphere for almost nine months.

In the United States, California has also seen several intense pyrocumulonimbus events. During the Carr fire near Redding in July , a fire tornado spinning at speeds of up to miles an hour was responsible for four of the eight deaths associated with the fire. In August , several possible fire tornadoes were reported in Northern California during a record-breaking fire season rife with firestorms. Firestorms also contribute to the damaging effects that wildfires have on human health.

The gases and particles that make up wildfire smoke have been linked to respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, and firestorms can exacerbate the blazes and increase levels of smoke.

As climate change stokes bigger and more intense wildfires , scientists believe the planet will experience a rise in firestorms. In , Australia saw as many fire-generated storms as it had seen in the 20 preceding years. On September 7, , smoke from a pyrocumulous cloud near Fresno, California, shot 10 miles into the stratosphere, a record for a fire in North America that likely released significant carbon emissions.

Answering these questions will be key to understanding the true consequences of firestorms in a warming world. All rights reserved. How firestorms get started Firestorms form through a convective process , in which heat rises through the air. Share Tweet Email.

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