19th
August 2001-The day the twister came to town!
(Photographs
copyright Eye On The Sky)
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| The
19th August 2001, as shown on the Met Office synoptic analysis at 00:00Z.
The slack low pressure moves very slowly northwards, pushing an occluded
front through north Wales and northern England. Image taken from http://www.wetterzentrale.de. . |
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| The
day began with the clearance of a cold front north-eastwards, leaving
clear air behind. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at this time, just sunny skies and patchy cumulus floating around. On this satellite image, my location in north-east Wales can be seen easily within the clear region of sky,in the centre of the main low pressure area (shown by the small swirl of bright cloud over North Wales). . |
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| Date:
19th August 2001 Location:
Hope, Flintshire, NE Wales However, around 11am, this clear "eye" filled with the strongest, most explosive convection I have ever seen. Small cumulus became towering congestus in minutes, such as this tower high above the surrounding cloud blanket. (Photograph taken using an old 35mm camera, then scanned). . |
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| By
1pm, the satellite shows the extent of the explosive convection across
the UK, especially North Wales where I was situated. Things on the ground now began to get a little chaotic to say the least! On this satellite image, the original low centre has now moved over the Manchester area, with the explosive convection just to the west, over NE Wales). . |
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Date:
19th August 2001 Location:
Hope, Flintshire, NE Wales |
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| Date:
19th August 2001 Location:
Hope, Flintshire, NE Wales About 10 minutes later, the same storm pictured previously, but in maturity, stretching high into the sky. By this time, lightning had began flickering at it's base, but behind me as I snapped this, things were becoming decidedly more active! (Photograph taken using an old 35mm camera, then scanned). . |
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| Date:
19th August 2001 Location:
Hope, Flintshire, NE Wales Looking out to the southwest, this bank of cloud was in fact one of the most intense storms I can remember, and dumped about two inches of rain over my area in half an hour. Among this, during the hour-long downpour, lightning flashed away and hail the size of small marbles caused slight accumulations. But worse was to come! (Photograph taken using an old 35mm camera, then scanned). . |
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| Date:
19th August 2001 Location:
Hope, Flintshire, NE Wales Staring skywards, I suddenly noticed a lowering in the approaching cloud base. After a couple of minutes, I could see an element of rotation within it and decided to make a grab for my camera. I was glad I did! (Photograph taken using an old 35mm camera, then scanned). . |
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| Date:
19th August 2001 Location:
Hope, Flintshire, NE Wales This storm had decided to spawn a fantastic funnel cloud, right next to my village!! With a perfect front-row view, I snapped away as the funnel grew and grew. By this time, there was wild scud action circulating around the twister near the cloud base. (Photograph taken using an old 35mm camera, then scanned). . |
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| Date:
19th August 2001 Location:
Hope, Flintshire, NE Wales The final image taken, which has been heavily zoomed and enhanced to clean up the old, original image, shows the impressively wide funnel finally almost touching down on the mountain top, right next to an electricity pylon. I then made the wrong decision of chasing it in my car, but by the time I got to where it initially was, it had all but vanished! (Photograph taken using an old 35mm camera, then scanned). . |
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| As
sporadic drops of rain the size of golf balls, interspursed with marble
hail began dropping over my area, the radar showed some beastly storms around. In the far NE of Wales and nearing the Wirral, a white "splodge", indicating the heaviest rainfall measurable, was about to hit my village. That was the same cell which produced the tornado! ! |