Atmospheric Chaos

June 5, 2020 - Crawford, NE Sunset mothership northeast of town. Love chasing the high plains. #newx

@thestormandsky Show me a better cloud pic than this!

Show me a better cloud pic than this.

Ready for a downright beautiful display of fluid dynamics? The Fujiwhara effect between two mid-latitude cyclones in the North Pacific.

Managed to catch a glimpse of the aurora last night from northeast KS. Could see some green with the naked eye. #kswx #aurora

Probably the most ridiculous part of the day (aside from backing up ad the Willow, OK tornado destroyed a shed next to us) was watching this tornado 🌪️ pic 2 touch down from the RFD on unsuspecting chasers behind us!

@MananMathur21 Yes, thanks! ❄️❄️❄️☃️

@ColtForney Ahm! You do know that’s snow cover right?

Cool satellite picture of Colorado and adjacent areas this morning! The strong north winds behind the cold front is forcing clouds as it ascends up the higher terrain & dissipating clouds as it descends and dries out. You can see this in the 3 areas circled, which increase 1/2

What a HORRIBLE forecast by meteorologists – especially myself. Not only were we spectacularly wrong – we communicated poorly. It became apparent last night that some of our initial expectations would prove fallacious. I'd like to address what went wrong with our forecast:

Blizzard conditions in Doniphan County Kansas right now! 7pm. #kswx

Awful situation happening now along Hwy 287 3 miles SE of Quanah. Multiple vehicle pickup occurring in the southbound lanes. Listen to the vehicles slamming into each other. This is bad. @NWSNorman

Never a good sign when a weather map turns purple! Widespread winds of 50-65 mph being reported through 1pm, with a few stronger local gusts! #okwx #okmesonet

2/2 in elevation…then where it’s clear skies the air is descending and heating up, dissipating the clouds. The Platte River valley is even forcing upslope clouds on the south side of the valley. #cowx #newx #wywx

@NWSNorman Really dangerous 🔥 fire weather conditions for #oklahoma today

Stronger winds will overspread the OKC area over the next. There was a recent report of 50+ mph winds around Yukon. #okwx

Here at the Storm Prediction Center, we dig deep into the data to do the best possible analysis of the storm threat. Even in 2026, this sometimes involves putting pencil to paper to do hand surface analysis. This is what the morning map looks like today.

What's a "wedge" tornado? And how rare are "megawedge" tornadoes? There is no technical definition of a "wedge." Storm chasers consider wedge tornadoes to be those that appear wider than they are tall. (For the tornado's height, they use the distance from the ground to the cloud base – AKA the "lifting condensation level". True tornado circulations extend up to 30,000 or 40,000 feet into the storm, so no tornadoes are *actually* wider than they are tall. We just can only see the part of the tornado that hangs down from the cloud base.) The tornado you see below occurred in Harlan, Iowa on April 26, 2024. It's the biggest I have ever seen. It was 1.1 miles wide, and had winds estimated by mobile Doppler radar up to 224 mph! Only 1 or 2 in 1,000 tornadoes grows larger than a mile wide – at least according to National Weather Service survey data. Realistically, that number might be significantly higher when counting inflow winds and ill-defined edges of the tornadic circulation, especially in rain-wrapped environments. (Where does the "tornado" end and the wind "around" the tornado begin?) MEGAWEDGE tornadoes are informally considered anything wider than 1.5 miles in diameter. The National Weather Service has only "officially" logged 30 megawedge tornadoes out of the 84,000+ in their database. The BIGGEST tornado on record occurred in El Reno, Oklahoma on May 31, 2013. It was 2.6 miles across! That said, researchers found evidence that the Mulhall, Okla. tornado on May 3, 1999 had a peak "core circulation" about 4.3 miles wide. In other words, that's the diameter of the 96 mph or greater winds.

More shots of the Wheatfield, Indiana tornado last night. The helical and horizontal vortices from this beast were wild to see. @FreddyMcKinneyR @CharlieBourdo

Also — word to the wise. If you’re chasing tonight, watch out for occlusions. Tornadoes, if they happen, could deviate *hard*.

This is potentially one of the biggest hazards of a storm chaser

The Storm Prediction Center has UPGRADED today’s tornado risk across parts of extreme southwest Oklahoma and the southeast Texas Panhandle! Stay weather aware and make sure you have multiple ways to receive alerts this afternoon into the evening. Any storms that develop along or south of the expected boundary will have the potential to become surface-based, which could allow an isolated significant tornado threat to develop.