It seems many people around Siouxland have been receiving the same e-mail for the past few days. It has a picture attached, and claims that it shows the tornado hitting the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in Monona County, Iowa on June 11.
While the Internet is a great place to find information, sometime the information is not truthful. When I first saw this photo I immediately knew it was not a picture of the Scout Camp and figured someone made it with image editing software. After I thought about it for a while, I realized this is likely not even a picture of a tornado. It is a large supercell thunderstorm, with a wall cloud hanging very low to the ground. The tornado in this picture would be hidden behind the buildings. I also thought the lighting looked off, but thought that may be due to a lengthened exposure near sunset with lightning in the background.
As it turns out the picture is not a fake, and was taken of a thunderstorm (not a tornado) as it moved through Orchard, IA on June 10. The picture was taken by Lori Mehman of Orchard, and first brought to the public by the Mitchell County Press-News. The original story can be found on their website (click here).
I have got to say, it is a great picture showing just how mean these storms can look.
Mike Zwier
Posted under Uncategorized
This post was written by Mike Zwier on June 14, 2008
Nice job Mike on finding some of the facts! I know I received the email from another meteorologist, in which he was questionable on it as well. I did a bit of digging and the image was first shown on another TV stations user-pictures from the storm on the 10th. It featured a name and all, thus giving it a little more credibility. Would have been an amazing storm to see, and the 11th certainly didn’t feature storm structure like that, rather outflow and rain wrapped features!
Nice job Mike on finding some of the facts! I know I received the email from another meteorologist, in which he was questionable on it as well. I did a bit of digging and the image was first shown on another TV stations user-pictures from the storm on the 10th. It featured a name and all, thus giving it a little more credibility. Would have been an amazing storm to see, and the 11th certainly didn’t feature storm structure like that, rather outflow and rain wrapped features!