The western Manitoba supercell of July 5, 2017
What happened?
On July 5, 2017, a supercell thunderstorm formed in western Manitoba, very close to the Foxwarren (XFW) RADAR site. This supercell was tornado-warned; although no tornadoes were spotted, hail up to the size of golf balls was reported.
What was unique about this storm was that it was so close to the RADAR that the finer, low-level structures of the storm were sampled.
In the RADAR images that follow, you can see the spiral structure of the reflectivity, indicative of strongly cyclonic flow. In addition, the velocity (both base velocity and storm-relative) show rotation within the storm. It is interesting to note, however, that the rotation within the storm was perhaps not as confined as would be required for tornadogenesis; the delta-V was on the order of 80 to 90 knots over a distance of about 3 km, about 500 feet above ground.
The imagery from this event is presented here.
RADAR images
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Last update to this page: November 27, 2017
