UTMC

Not a BIG tornado, far from it, but an unusual one.
Over here, usually, tornadoes happen when a truly big storm comes along. The regular, non-tornado related damage of these storms tends to dwarf the tornadoes. Still rare, happens maybe once a year or less. Even less often, not-so-big storms and areas of regular bad weather may bring one.
These happen, if they do, in the flat north-east quarter of Germany.
But this new one on Friday happened not only without a massive storm, but it happened just twenty miles from me, in a part of the country called the "Bergisches Land", literally the "mountain-ish land". Quite un-flat there, and the entirely wrong side of the country. I couldn't remember even one tornado happening in the western half of the country, had to look it up, found two in the last decade. Both hundred miles or more south of here, but again, both in very un-flat landscapes. It seems I have some misconceptions about tornadoes.

Not a big one by far, F0 or F1 apparently, but part of a trend of tornadoes becoming more common in Europe (Venice had one a few weeks back, the corner of Britain that used to be the only part of Europe to EVER get tornadoes gets them regularly now, apparently).

Anyway, everyone and their mother have cellphone cameras these days, so here:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nuo-m_oGF0Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I'm not worried, merely intrigued and thought I'd share.

Neat!

F0, I'd say.

Those are usually dismissed as "dust devils" here in middle America. There are lots of little ones that no one knows about just because you can drive for miles and never see a structure in some places.
Last one I actually saw was the F4 that ate Franklin, KS which is about a mile from my house. I was about a half mile (800m) away from it at my friends house helping him get the parents underground.
Only good picture that shows any scale I can find online.


Still nowhere near the scale of the Joplin MO tornado, largely because it moved through much less populated areas.

I do believe that twisters have been on the increase, and Hurricanes too. Temperature extremes, are likley culpable. To my understanding, when there is a large differance in surface vs. air temps twisters of various sorts are likely to crop up. Warm ground + cool air = twister

Mountainous regions and places with lots of lakes/rivers often have too many small arias of differnt temps to make the volume of differnce that it takes to make a system. With a general increase in extremes, we all will see things croping up more frequwntly and inplaces where they didnt before.

Again I could be wrong, but this is my understanding

Honestly I didnt know there were F0's, they are just "Dust Devils" here state side.

I've had the pleasure of riding within sight of 4 tornadoes. Always have the urge to sing "Riders on the Storm" by the Doors.

JoJoLesh wrote:I do believe that twisters have been on the increase, and Hurricanes too. Temperature extremes, are likley culpable. To my understanding, when there is a large differance in surface vs. air temps twisters of various sorts are likely to crop up. Warm ground + cool air = twister

No need to get so complicated. Global temperatures rise = more thermal energy in that atmosphere. That energy has to go somewhere, so something. Like making the air move about more.
Interestingly enough, the reverse would also work. Put up enough wind turbines, in the right place, stop global warming. You take that energy out of the atmosphere, it stops being heat it does.