The forming stage of the Manchester tornado. The area of
violent rotation extended from the lowering in the center of the shot to the
far left edge of the image.
Manchester South Dakota
Tornado
24 June 2003
As the tornado west of Esmond dissipated the wall cloud went through a dramatic transition in a few short minutes. This system changed from a small scale circulation to a very large and violent rotating mass. At first it appeared as if the whole wall cloud would come to ground forming a mile wide tornado, but after numerous touch downs the east side of the circulation took over forming a half mile wide vortex. I had very good position on the formation and early stages of the tornado, but waited too long before heading north and missed it hitting the small town of Manchester. Since chasers success is now measured by how close one gets these images may be disappointing to some viewers. In retrospect I'm not upset about not being 20 feet away from an F-4, I still got some nice shots of the whole tornado, as opposed to just the debris cloud. Besides, I've been close before and have pictures to prove it, but not this time.
All images and text © copyright Gene Moore unless otherwise indicated.
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The forming stage of the Manchester tornado. The area of
violent rotation extended from the lowering in the center of the shot to the
far left edge of the image. |
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By the time this satellite photograph had been taken much of
Nebraska, the Dakota's and Minnesota had erupted with severe storms. Huge anvil
canopies covered much of the northern plains and more smaller storms were
firing behind the cold front. This was the beginning of the end for the
powerful supercells in South Dakota and Nebraska. Within the next hour the cold
front would overrun and kill storms in Nebraska and the outflow boundary from
SE South Dakota would race north injuring the Manchester
supercell. |
Images courtesy of WeatherTap Inc. This sequence when looped provides a beautiful shot of the outflow boundary surging toward the Manchester storm complex. It will take another hour to arrive, in the mean time more tornadoes would scour the land. |
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The developing stage of the Manchester tornado. Violent rotation swirled as condensation form on the ground and joined the chaotic motion aloft. |
The area of condensation widens but the rotation remains in multiple centers. My times for the Manchester tornado were from 7:29 PM to 7:54 PM. |
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Condensation lifted and spun like black angle hair, you had to
see this to believe it, very dramatic. |
For a while we had two separate tornadoes rotating around each other. Each one of these funnels was as large as a typical big tornado. The following images represent various changes in the size and shape of the tornado. |
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At this time the tornado was beginning to consolidate into one
large circulation. Two distinct funnels remain in the image, the right one much
larger but they are merging. |
Finally after a wild performance the tornado tightens up into one large wedge. More shots of this shape of the tornado are posted below. |
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I made a mistake by staying too long in one position and the tornado was getting away from us. I didn't realize the road north to Manchester was just a couple miles east. After turning north for another view of the tornado we could see it was beginning to narrow and the cloud base was being eroded by dry air. For a while sunlight was filtering into the back of the funnel from the RFD (rear flank downdraft) slot. |
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Pardon the color differences but I'm mixing video captures and 35 mm film. It's darn near impossible to make both look the same. The above left shot is a close up of the dramatic debris cloud,
although far from the tight shots others got on this day. In today's chasing
getting close is everything, but I still enjoy watching the whole
storm. |
The bottom two shots are the final stages of the tube stage leading into the rope out and dissipation of the tornado. |