Yet another tragedy occurred yesterday with serious death and destruction impacting the citizens of Joplin, Missouri, from a large tornado. The above images show radar reflectivity and IR satellite imagery from NCAR RAP shortly after the tornado struck Joplin ( a medium-sized city in southwest Missouri just north of I-44).
High resolution radar (with a couple of my editorial additions) is shown below from weather.com.
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The high-resolution radar image below shows the destructive tornado which moved through Joplin, Mo. It shows a well-defined hook echo with the lavender tornado debris ball (circled area on left image) at the base of the hook. A debris ball is the radar seeing actual debris suspended in the air by the tornado.
According to Dr. [Greg] Forbes, the lavender debris signature, which marks the tornado, is just over a mile wide and extends with a tilt toward the north upward to about 18,000 feet. This indicates that substantial debris was being tossed [i.e., carried aloft by the tornado circulation and the mesocyclone's updraft] at least that high.
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