Lots of things going on in southern Colorado on Sunday, from heavy enough rain for flash flooding (again) on the west side of Colorado to tornadoes and gustnadoes closer to Denver.
Let's look at the rainfall totals first...
.49" - Colorado Springs Airport
.15" - Pueblo Airport
1.54" - 3 miles southwest of Colorado Springs
1.43" - Near 8th and Moreno, Colorado Springs
1.00" - and dime-sized hail. Yoder
.64" - Northern Downtown Colorado Springs
.59" - East-central Colorado Springs
.28" - Fowler
.24" - La Junta
.12" - and 1/4" hail. Cripple Creek
.12" - Woodland Park
Now, on to gustnadoes and landspouts. At least one gustnado was reported near Parker Sunday afternoon.
These are rotating circulations that don't develop from "supercell" thunderstorms (as the big ones do), but appear along the gust front. (That's the blast of wind caused by falling precipitation that spreads out along the ground in advance of the storm).
They're often associated with lines and clusters of thunderstorms.
Most are weak, but some may reach speeds of over 100 mph.
Landspouts develop by a different process...
They develop when rotating columns of air at the surface are picked up by the updraft of a developing thunderstorm. They can form before precipitation in a developing thunderstorm is even detected on Radar.
Damage can be significant, as these circulations can reach F2 on the Fujita scale (the scale that measures a tornado's intensity...and F2 winds can be as strong as 157 mph).
I found a great link, if you'd like more information. Try http://www.srh.noaa.gov/topics/attach/html/ssd96-8.htm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment