SA Tornado

2 Days ago we had some bad weather here in JHB. The result was this just east of the city going over a couple of townships.



Apparently there was another one during that day over the freestate about 400 km away.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2011/1 ... aged-towns

Only one life lost but the damage looks insane. 166 injured though. Central SA actually has these especially in the karoo and freestate planes, It's mostly open farmland there. The twisters usually never exceed F3 but are mostly unheard of due to the low amount of witnesses.

I'm no meteorologist but I do know we get pretty bad weather here this time of year and looking at some of the storm systems we get might give anyone from central US a bit of a scare. Not becuase they are worse but becuase they look the same, wall clouds, giant swirling storm systems, hale the size of golf balls, sometimes even bigger. Lightning that strikes enough to cuase sections of seamless daylight outside. We call em highveld supercells.

I'ts also funny how everybody here thinks this is strange and new. 1948 a twister went through Roodepoort (JHB) cuasing a great amount of damage.

SA gets bad tornadoes at times esp this time of year. Nelson Mandela was in one in the 90s. Google Tornado Outbreaks:Southern Hemisphere(Wikipedia)to learn more.

That's a beast tornado. What I wouldn't give to see one of those.

Damn. That tornado looks like a monster! I'm impressed by how wide it is at the bass (that's what she said, laugh it up) and it looks incredible dense. Nevertheless good luck! From a tornado scare in MA a couple years ago, I was told that when a tornado is "upon" you, get on the ground, quick. The windows could shatter inward... right?

So majestic...

I found some satellite images from a bunch of Storm chasers. Placed them in sequence.

Thick red circle: Duduza.
Thick blue circle: West rand (Johannesburg)

The person that recorded the images marked his location in the first image at the top with a blue arrow and Duduza below. Follow the cell moving westward in the below images.