jeremy_wheeler's Blog

We had a tornado touch down yesterday in the viewing area.  An EF 0 did some damage in Aulander, NC.  Jon Cash and I covered the storms from the morning through the early afternoon.  We saw some good indications of rotation a few times as the storms moved northward from Northern Bertie county up through Southampton County.  It came from a band of storms that preceded a warm front.  I had an instructor at Mississippi State tell me that you can never underestimate a warm front.  I've heard that some storm chasers will even chase warm fronts out in the Plains to catch tornadoes (in some cases).  Typically warm fronts just bring light rain a.k.a stratiform precip.  There was a lot of tropical air moving into the region.  So cloud bases were very low.  Low clouds mixed with a little spin in the atmosphere can produce short lived tornadoes and that's what we saw yesterday.  We had reports/photos of barn damage.  Several mobile homes had minor/moderate damage.  There was also a funnel cloud reported near Courtland and a photo of a possible funnel cloud near Wakefield.  It's been a few busy days.  The upside of all of this is that we are getting some very beneficial rain lately.  Here are some of my weather watcher rain reports:  Don in Toano 2.37" in the last 2 days.  Cindy in Williamsburg 4".  Greg in Currituck about 3".  Pam in Gloucester 4".  Donna in Blackwater (S. Virginia Beach) has over 4".  Finally, Doris on the Lower Eastern Shore got 3/4", but that was before the heavy rain this morning.  My yard is happy.  That's for sure.