JoshuaK
(Weather Guru)
Sat Jul 05 2008 08:03 PM
Question about Storm Formation - July 3rd, 2008 incident

I was at work last Thursday evening when I observed a rapidly firing up thunderstorm in West Lakeland, caused I believe by the convergence of the East Coast and West Coast seabreezes. The storm quickly grew intense, and I was watching a strange cloud formation on the SW side of the storm when I spotted a rotating mass of cloud in a rain free zone. As I continued watching, I spotted a funnel cloud peeking it's nasty cone out of the bottom of the cloud, and promptly reported it to the local NWS office in Ruskin. I continued to watch the funnel cloud move east before it disappeared into the non-rain free portion of the storm.

Now, onto the question of what I observed next, and did not report. About three-four minutes after disapperance of said funnel, I watched in amazement as a rather large rotating mass of thunderstorm formed into an upside down bowl shaped, and out of the center of the bowl emerged a massive wall cloud, also rotating, that proceeded to suck up lots of ground clutter clouds into the storm.

Now, a few days after the fact, I find myself in doubt as to whether or not that was in fact a wall cloud, or just a massive funnel cloud that I observed. It looked like a wall cloud from videos I've seen on TV, but I don't remember seeing the inverted bowl shape around the wall cloud from those videos, so I thought I'd ask people here for their expert opinion or knowledge on the matter.



Note: This is NOT an official page. It is run by weather hobbyists and should not be used as a replacement for official sources. 
CFHC's main servers are currently located at Hostdime.com in Orlando, FL.
Image Server Network thanks to Mike Potts and Amazon Web Services. If you have static file hosting space that allows dns aliasing contact us to help out! Some Maps Provided by:
Great thanks to all who donated and everyone who uses the site as well. Site designed for 800x600+ resolution
When in doubt, take the word of the National Hurricane Center