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Originally Posted by CanisLupusArctos
May we see the pics and video? I didn't see it rotating, either, so I couldn't call it anything based on my own sight. But what to say to the many who did? My friend saw three "fingers" as she described them, dancing in a circle around each other. I know her to be sane, intelligent and drug-free. I have seen my share of scud clouds over the last 20 years and this one stood out to me. And why did the wind direction at my station blow directly toward the "scud" cloud the entire time it was passing? Storms don't normally do that here. We get straight-line from whatever direction they're coming from. This scud cloud acted as a magnet for surrounding air, the entire time it was passing.
This storm has caused me to doubt (more than before) what the radar really sees around here, because there apparently wasn't enough of an echo to warn my location about the severe thunderstorm until the worst of it was already passing. Before getting here, it had already done a good deal of damage, which I saw when I left to drive around afterwards. The lights went out about 5 minutes before the storm's arrival (when the wind was still calm here) and that was my cue to prepare for severe -- if I'd been depending solely on official warnings I'd now be retrieving my stuff from the lake, and/or recovering from injuries.
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People see what they want to see. Ever see those shows on the discovery channel where they float logs in water on Lock Ness? Every one of the perfectly sane people saw the Lock Ness Monster.
However, there were definitely fingers of scud, rapidly rising in the updrafts which fueled the storm. And rapidly rising air has to be replaced from somewhere, so it's not unusual to have the wind rushing in towards the storm like you indicate. I observed the same thing.
Right click on this link and choose "save as." The other videos I took are too long to upload. This is looking towards Gilford and if I had to estimate, I'd say the base of that scud was over Governors Island. You certianly can't fault anyone for being spooked, as it did make a lot of people do a double-take, I'm sure.
http://www.weirsonline.com/DSCN4142.MOV
The below pic is not from this storm, it was taken in 2005 and is one of my favorite fake-tornado scud pics. It had people panicked. The hill in the foreground is Brickyard Mountain.
