Australian Severe Weather Forum

Hi Tim - yes definitely call it a tornado - ie. a funnel cloud extending from cloud base AND impacting the ground. The other terms like landspout help categorise the processes that caused it - which weather enthusiasts are interested in of course.

regards, Michael

Heres a couple of more pics which i took on Wednesday arvo of the storm front that came through Wednesday night but only had lighting embedded in the cloud

Just to add as of the 13/03/2009 i upgraded from a Nokia N95 to a Nokia N85 the newest mobile out but it still has a 5 megapixel camera but just better coverage on Optus ;-)

Tim,

As noted earlier, this is a definite landspout tornado - non-supercellular - absolutely no doubt. I included a definition in an earlier post to clarify my reasoning. I concur also with your comments John.

Let's not get into the insecure arguments and "straw clutching" about the severity and importance of tornadoes from the past on other forums. Yes I know this is a tornado that occurred in South Australia and you are from memory from South Australia hence the importance in your terms. Irrelevant of location, tornadoes can be dangerous and damaging - just some due to their mechanisms are more dangerous and damaging than others. Supercellular tornadoes can achieve wind speeds that can make them the most potent of all tornado types.

(I will make it quite clear that my views and comments on this forum are NOT allowed to be discussed on other forums. Please let's get back on track and discuss news, information photographs and videos relating to the event. For any discussion, please begin a thread in the general weather section. Now back the Eyre Peninsula Landspout Tornado event).

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

Thanks John, Michael, & Jimmy for your comments & clarification.

Although Jimmy, I'm not sure you followed my post - I was never suggesting it wasnt a landspout, and yes the storm wasnt a supercell. Irrelevant of the location & severity, my post was only asking about the difference in relation to damage caused & also in regards to what the general public & media should be calling them.
As John mentioned, they have enough trouble getting over the 'mini' term so anything else apart from tornado is going to be even more confusing..

Meanwhile in regards to the actual event, I'm going to ask the SA BOM about how they are following up & investigating it, and what they come up with. If anything it will be good to report back to those in ASWA or on any forums, the actual reasons for this landspout, so that everyone can have a better understanding of the differences & the conditions of these events.....

Cheers, Tim.

Very photogenic! Whoever got the pictures posted on that link couldn't have been in a better spot, thanks for sharing.

Yes, a very impressive landspout tornado.  While the term landspout is very useful for the weather fraternity I agree with the above comments in not providing the media with it.   

We get the odd landspout funnel cloud in NZ but rarely anything that looks as impressive as this. In NZ sea breeze convergence often plays a key roll in their development.

The funnel appearance would have been helped by where it formed. In an area that has had long periods of dry weather lately (if not still in drought), as well as being largely a red soil area (as you can see in the initial photos from the dirt road it was taken from). Hence the colour of the funnel.

So a lot more soil/dust would be picked up by a landspout there than something of similar strength in NZ or a wetter climate. The area does experience dust storms at times during the summer months.

Ok Tim,

Fair enough comment - thanks for clarifying.

I also would like to recall Michael Bath's comment:


In my opinion, and as suggested in the previous post, boundaries most likely were in place for the tornado to develop with such incredible structure. Unless the other storms interacted with boundaries, I think chances they were tornadic were prety low.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara