Twister in Murkle This Afternoon

[Tugmistress]

If anyone has any photographs like the one on my site here (http://www.tugmistress.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=52)
then feel free to email me with them and i will put them up with credits.... if i get enough i will open a new gallery for them especially :D

[Bill Fernie]

Can you be certain this was a twister and not a contrail. Remember the debate last year when we had photos sent in by various people . See this link
http://www.caithness.org/fpb/december2004/photogallery/thumbs.htm?3?7

It certainly looks similar to this one - http://www.caithness.org/atoz/weather/tornado.jpg
and
http://www.caithness.org/atoz/weather/tornadoblownup.jpg
from a few years ago

[George Brims]

As you can't see whether the tip is touching the ground, you might have to call it a "funnel cloud". Once a funnel cloud makes contact with the ground, it becomes a tornado proper. I'm pretty sure it's not a contrail. It has the taper and slight snakey curve of a funnel cloud/tornado. We had quite a few of them in the Los Angeles area this winter (wettest winter in 120 years) and some did touch down and damage houses. You should check with the farmer over the hill to see if they lost any sheep!

Many years ago my dad and the guys who worked for him worked well into the night taking in a field of bales, which they built into a big stack in the next field where the outside cows would spend the winter. The next day we discovered a small twister had hit the stack and scattered a large part of it back up the field. A lot of the bales had burst so we had to fork the hay into the baler to re-bale them. This was in Watten, for those who don't know me from my Caithness days. I've also seen small twisters on lochs on hot summer days.

[Tugmistress]

Thanks George,
yes i am convinced it is a twister, ok maybe my lack of knowledge not calling it a funnel cloud is a bit bad, but i like to think i can have a little bit of poetic license ;) and be forgiven for it :D
i hope.
Just added another piccy of it, sent to me by a lady from Gills, it is not quite as clear (understandable given the distance) and it is peeking out from behind a lamp post.

[George Brims]

Well if I hadn't lived here through this winter I wouldn't have known about the distinction either! "Amazing news - LA actually has weather for a change!" Usually they make a big fuss over nothing here. A piffling little band of rain gets labeled a "storm". They make me laugh - to me storm is like the night my uncle Douglas's new silo building blew away!

This year the weather guys on TV have never had so much to do. And the outside reporters have never had to do so little to make things seem dramatic. To give you an idea, we had spell where you couldn't get out of LA by road to the the northwest because of the big mudslide that killed 20 people at La Conchita, to the north because the road was blocked for three days by snow, or to the northeast because of flooding on the highway out to Vegas. They were interviewing a lot of very frustrated truckers.

Oh if the twister is over the sea, it's called a waterspout. There were tons of those on the news too.

[garycs]

Hi Tugmistress, we meet again (I'm Pyrogaz on Net-Weather ;) ). Nice pic, clearly a funnel cloud and obviously very close to touching down, I reckon we should give the benefit of the doubt and call it a twister.

I recall reading somewhere that the UK has the most tornadoes per unit area than any other country. We just don't get the severe ones that make all the news, for the worst possible reasons :(

[Bobinovich]

We managed to get a picture of the twister from the Lady Janetswood (?) corner coming into Thurso from Castletown.
Not a great image on camera as it was only taken on a nokia phone.
It was spectacular to look at so we drove to the Electricity Sub-station on the Stainland straight and got an even better view. By this time it had started to disperse, but you could plainly see the swirling and a funnel going through the centre of it.

[Tugmistress]

Hi Gaz,
glad you made it onto this forum :D nice to catch up again :D

I have been sent a couple more pictures of this 'Twister/funnel cloud', which i have added to the page aswell, keep them coming folks.... it would be nice to get some more and i will open up an album in the gallery especially for this phenomena :D
(you can always become a member an upload your own album too ;) )

[rainbow]

What a shame you had dark clouds in the West of the county - over in the East it was beautiful sunshine and blue skies for most of the day!!! :D

[SharkHQ]

Our football lads got a pretty good view at the spectacle and we have a small animation and a couple of pictures you may want to have a look at.
I say the animations small its about 280kb so if you don't have broadband you'll have to give it a minute.

http://www.patheticsharks.co.uk/news/stories/news213b.htm

[Tugmistress]

absolutely brilliant animation, thank you shark hq for sharing :D

[SharkHQ]

Cheers! :D

[pie2000]

I seen what appeared to be a twister/funnel cloud but it was in the direction of spittal have photos but they really are not very good as a great lampost was in my way!!! but you can make it out.

[SandTiger]

Send them all over to www.tugmistress.com as the quality doesn't mater since we are working on plotting it from various reports and data (angles, in other words :lol: )

Squirt them over please mate.

[SandTiger]

The lampost will make an excellent POV/ Marker if we can match the time of shooting accordingly :)

So it all helps