Possible Rain-Wrapped Tornado

Late Wednesday afternoon, I was in the vicinity of what appeared to be a rain-wrapped tornado in western Kentucky. Due to trees and rain, it was very difficult to see anything conclusive. Toward the beginning there was definitely a low, rotating wall cloud. As I got closer and intercepted the storm a few times, it got very windy with swirling winds, near-zero visibility and some branches and leaves flying through the air.

I did not see anything conclusive and I still have to get home to Connecticut and review the footage. I’ll have a few things to post later on, maybe in a day or two.

What I will say is that the reports of a “violent, mile-wide wedge” are bogus. I was right there and didn’t see anything like that. I started on the north side, dropped around to the west and then got out in front of the storm to the south. I even drove through the area where the “wedge” was reported and saw a total of one tree down.

Was there a tornado? Probably. My best guess is a weak, intermittent rain-wrapped one. Maybe an EF-1, but I’ll leave that up to the National Weather Service to decide conclusively.

Also, I was in pursuit of what looked like an even more impressive (possible) tornado earlier in the afternoon, but being in a heavily forested valley pretty much shot any chances of seeing anything conclusive there too.