Not-So-Calm Before The Storm

Sure, back when I went storm chasing earlier this year, I saw perhaps a dozen funnels briefly touch down left and right in a multi-vortex tornado. As surreal and scary as the actual funnel clouds were, I maintain that they oddly weren't the most threatening sight I witnessed. Rather, it was the violent motion of the clouds associated with the updraft that composed the larger mesocyclone (that's some fancy wordsies, ain't it?), in which the clouds seemed to be moving in all directions simultaneously: up and down, swirling counter-clockwise in a haphazard yet strangely organized fashion.

As you can tell by my feeble attempt to describe this phenomenon, it's difficult to convey exactly what this looked like until now, thanks to the magic of YouTube (and the good folks at TornadoVideos.net).

The following video is a time-lapse of a rotating supercell in Argentina. (Yes, they have tornadoes in the southern hemisphere, too.) Just after the 1:00 mark, when you can begin to see the wall cloud form, is when you begin to see what I'm talking about:



Eerie, ain't it? True, this is a time-lapse video sped up somewhat, but these clouds can move close to the same speed in real-time. So while there is no doubt the sight of a tornado is terrifying, the movement of clouds beneath the greater mesocyclone is a quietly foreboding image.