Colorado/Kansas Tornadoes.....and a RANT

First I want to start off by saying that there were 50 tornado reports today, mainly in Western Kansas. Some large tornadoes, as a matter of fact. From the reports I have seen so far no towns were hit, thank goodness that area of Kansas is very rural. As for the video of the very large tornado north of Denver.....wow. From what I have seen it looks like EF-3 damage. You would have thought F-5 after seeing that video, but the size of tornadoes doesn't always coorelate to how strong they are. Generally the larger the tornado the stronger it is, but not always. In any case, the tornado was massive. In the weather world we call it a wedge tornado.

What was amazing to me is that the temperature was only 58 degrees as the tornado was occuring! There had to have been incredible wind shear to produce that tornado with a temperature that low. It just goes to show how much we still don't know about tornado formation.

I will post a forecast for Friday and the weekend on Friday. I think the tornado outbreak will continue in Kansas and Nebraska.

I have a rant to post about some irresponsible weather coverage I saw tonight. I don't have a degree or TV experience, but this is just my opinion. A local TV guy showed footage of a brief tornado outside of the small town of Hammon in Western Oklahoma. Hint: it wasn't Gary England or Rick Mitchell. To me it appeared the tornado lifted a minute or so later. TV guy goes to radar and starts commenting on a "donut hole" that he sees on radar. He then goes on to state that it is a mile wide, and this is an indication that there is a large tornado moving directly toward Hammon. He did not confirm this with storm tracker reports either. How would you have felt if a TV meteorologist had claimed a mile-wide tornado was moving toward your hometown, and it was just a "false alarm"?

To be honest it made me angry. Radar is a helpful tool, but only in rare situations can you actually pinpoint a tornadic circulation on it. If you are going to claim a mile-wide tornado is on the ground, you better be *darn* sure it is there by confirming with your spotters. This kind of reporting is what gives meteorologists a bad rap about blowing things out of proportion. Thank you to the other 2 stations for keeping your sense of sanity. As for the other station, thank you for your ridiculous Broadway production.