Gustnadoes and Personal Mistakes

Hey all!
Today I wanted to talk about gustnadoes, as they're quite underrated; sometimes they reach tornado strength, though they're much more difficult to forecast.

Let me tell you about my first encounter with a gustnado;
I was driving in my first car when the typical afternoon thunderstorms rolled in. At a stop light I felt the wind go from calm to the car pulling to the right. Sure enough, to my right there was a debris cloud, reminise of a dust devil churning its way across the road right next to me... So how do I know that was a gustnado?

Truth be told you can't always tell, in fact, arguably a landspout, a strong dust devil, and a gustnado are virtually indistinguishable at times. However, given the relative location of the ground rotation in comparision to incoming storms, and no confirmation of cloud-based rotation, I had concluded this was the first gustnado I had seen.

Figure 1: A photo I took of a dust devil near Canon City, notice there are no clouds in the immediate area.




Figure 2: A gustnado I photographed near Deer Trail, Colorado. Notice: there is no discernable connection to the cloud base.





Figure 3: A gustnado my chase partner photographed along I-70. This was the second debris cloud we saw on this chase...

Figure 4: A photo I took of a supercell tornado roping out near Eads, Colorado. I felt this photo showed an obvious connection between cloud and ground.




Figure 5: A photo I took of a cycling tornadic supercell near the town of Fort Morgan, notice the cloud reaching from the top towards the ground


What makes this even more confusing is that dust devils and gustnadoes can both turn into tornadoes; should the circulation connect to a cloud base it is now a tornado. But what about a tornado debris signature? If said gustnado is strong enough to loft debris, and if embedded within the RfD (rear flank downdraft), could, at least in theory, send a debris signature as well.

A good example of a strong gustnado was at the Indianna State Fair grounds, here are two videos taken by two separate attendees of the concert that was hit head on:

Note in the first video you hear someone ask "Mark is that a tornado?" If you watch, when the stage gets hit, the dust is rotating, and as it passes the stage you will notice the flag pole pulling into the debris cloud from the opposite direction as it passes.

I got too close during the storm in figure two. There were numerious splitting supercells on the high plains, and by the time I knew I was too close it was already too late;

The gustnado was near a hail core with stones varying from golfball to softball size, as the gustnado approached my vehicle (even touching the highway girders next to me) I made an attempt to flee through the hail core. Hail smashed my car, and after the gustnado dissipated I drove towards where I has seen it, and drops of mud rained on my car. I kept going and ended up stuck in the mud outside of Akron, Colorado. Thankfully, the storm had passed me already, so I snapped photos:

Because I got impatient and went back West, I had missed all the tornadoes that day, including the multivortex tornado near Wiggins, Colorado, which I had forecast happening within 20 miles the day before. A tough lesson learned, but a lesson nonetheless, and I came out alive. I learned to trust my initial forecasts a little more, and to be more patient, less emotional, and more observant of changing weather conditions and the overall pattern.

Next time we'll talk about microbursts, thanks for reading, stay weather aware everyone!