Weather, Storms & Hurricane Blog

I was heading west today, back towards Lake Okeechobee after spending much of the day along the coast, when I came across a developing thunderstorm. This storm was moving west-northwest and was between western metro West Palm Beach and the eastern rim of Lake Okeechobee. This area is known for the daily lake breeze boundary during the summer and storms develop along this boundary almost daily. Well today this storm developed east of it, and was moving towards it.

As the storm crossed the lake breeze boundary, the storm became much stronger and the lightning was very intense and continuous as I neared Canal Point on S.R. 441 / 98 North. I could see some very strong convergence taking place and a new flat black rain-free based developed over the highway. I knew this storm was interacting with the boundary now and some slight low-level rotation could be seen with tagging rain curtains to the north closer to the core. Shortly after the base developed, a funnel developed and remained for a good 3 minutes. As I got closer to the base, I could see a faint transparent vortex extending from the funnel to the ground and a weak dusty ground circulation was taking place. Ahh a cool landspout!

This was all very short-lived, maybe 1-2 minutes at the most landspout feature. I tried to pull over to shoot video, but had 3-5 cars behind me and little shoulder to work with. I just shot a few digital stills through the glass as I tried to get closer, but it quickly weakened and the area filled in with heavy precipitation and vivid lightning. It was pretty cool to see and was gone in a flash.

This portion of western Palm Beach County has tornado reports and sightings all the time in the spring and summer months, and I think a lot of them are this type of setup producing weak short-live landspouts. Non-mesocyclone tornadic / Landspout features that last only minutes, and a lot of times wrapped up in heavy rains and not seen. I wish I would of cleared the power poles and Sugar plant in time to get video of the whole structure of the vortex, but my zoom on my digital is nothing like what I have with my video gear. All in all, a very interesting afternoon and treated to at least something that was rotating.

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