Thursday, October 27, 2011

NWS Sterling tornado survey from Oct 13 storms

This link provides the final data from the official storm survey conducted by the NWS Sterling team. It appears that the tornado in Fauquier county that occurred around 5:00 pm Oct. 13th was from the same portion of the storm that produced the northern wall cloud I photographed roughly 30 minutes beforehand. As recorded in a prior post I later retraced this storm's path via radar and found that it was likely the same cell that caused a mini-panic on the University of Maryland's College Park campus later that afternoon.

When I started out from home that day I had two alternatives to intercept the tornado-warned cell that was heading north from Louisa county. I chose the southern route (State Route 3) to Culpeper, but if I had chosen the northern route (U.S. Route 17) toward Bealeton I may have seen this tornado...but then again, maybe not as I didn't have mobile radar access to alert me to the development of this particular cell. I might have wound up too far west to see it!

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