WAFF Doppler Radar
Tuesday 6/19/07 I worked only during the morning. A
significant weather alert was issued for Morgan County, AL at11:10 a.m. and I wondered why. It was barely raining. The conditions were not favorable for severe weather.
The area where storms were forming was not far away and frankly, things didn't look
that bad. There was not even any lightning.
A little while later I was driving to Huntsville from Decatur, Alabama. I saw what looked like a "textbook" wall cloud over Madison, AL. All my storm spotter training and 35 years of weather observations inside of me screamed, "this
CANNOT be a wall cloud!" Conditions were not ideal for tornadoes and no watches or warnings were in effect.
I will say this: I saw an isolated lowering of the cloud base and the clouds seemed to show some rotation, albeit weak. There was heavy rain and gusty wind at the surface, but no lightning.
I was tempted to report this to the
NWS Huntsville. Then I thought about one of the rules of spotting: keep an eye on it for a few minutes before jumping to conclusions. It seemed to be absorbed into the rest of the clouds after about five minutes. I then went on my merry way.
The only thing, in retrospect, that should have given me more concern, was that a
significant weather alert had been issued for the same storm a little earlier to my west.
Tonight I read
this article in the Decatur, AL Daily. It just goes to show that with severe weather, one of the biggest "rules" is to "expect the unexpected". Alabama weather legend
J.B. Elliott deserves credit for teaching me that idea!
Unfortunately my camera died on my recent vacation so I have no photos or videos to share.
Southern Weather Brigade teammate
Dewdrop also had an unexpected
cool experience!
Just 8 miles away to my south, I ran into this!
With winds blowing from the WSW, I ran into some rain.
The interesting part about this storm were the gusty winds and the big drop in temperature. We went from 90 to 73 in a matter of about ten minutes with NO RAIN falling. Interesting. Quite a bit of lightning, but my finger wasn't fast enough on the trigger to catch it! Working on a radar snap of this pop-up. We'll see if I can find it.
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