Saturday, March 28, 2009

Tornado Or Not?

Today, I read someone's chase report from 3/23. I'm not going to mention any names. This person has a picture of a wall cloud from around the same time a tornado was reported. This person counts seeing the wall cloud as seeing the tornado.

I'm going to cry foul here. Are we really that desperate to add to our totals?

From now on, any time I "count" a tornado, it will be fully documented. This applies to anything I have seen in the past as well. Thus, this leaves my "career tornado count" at 1. I'm only going to count the documented Alta Vista, Colorado event last year. I will not be counting the March 7th spin-up near Alta Mills, Kansas as I have no way to directly correlate the spin up at the surface to the wall cloud and scud above. I let others convince me of what I was seeing, even though I was unsure.

I have good video of a nice "spin-up" that occurred under a funnel on March 23rd in Oklahoma, but that was on the edge of the RFD gust front. Not a tornado. I saw wall clouds galore that day, some very close to the ground. Not a tornado. I don't care if someone was in the trees and saw a ground spin-up under the wall cloud I was staring at. I didn't see it, I don't count it.

So, I'll stick with my one real tornado. I'm not trying to win any contests or pretend I'm a better storm chaser than I am. 1 tornado in 53 chases. Haha

Next time you're going to say that you saw a tornado, show me the proof. Pics/video work fine ... not someone else's report and a DISTANT picture of the wall cloud Jesus Christ Storm Chaser.

Your thoughts?


UPDATE!!!

The photo in question has since been digitally altered to show a condensed tornado on a day that no one saw a condensed tornado! The report was even rewritten to reflect the fact. Jesus, there were 100 people on that storm. Not to mention the fact that the alteration is really awful and very evident. What the hell!?

3 comments:

Sean Mullins said...

I dont really keep track of the number of tornadoes I see. I know I require a nice full condensation tube to get all warm and fuzzy inside. Really could care less as long as I know I had a great time. Providing proof of a tornado is another topic. I end up driving much of the time and may shoot many pictures through the course of the day. Afterall, we are multitasking so if the tornadoes are short lived, it could be excusable to say we saw a tornado, but due to a multitude of circumstances, failed to provide visual documentation. There are a few images of monday's tornado and it would only be fair to assume someone else in the same area also saw that tornado. Anyway... Also curious to hear other's thoughts.

Sean Mullins said...

Apparently, I havent done my research lol!

Dann Cianca said...

Well, I think I'm becoming a tornado snob. ... but I also think a lot of this has become pretty ridiculous.