Did we see a tornado tonight?

slavedave

Driving south on the M50 between the Ballymun exit and the Finglas exit at 8.40pm tonight, my son and I saw an unusual cloud formation to the west, at the periphery of a huge mass of dark, low rain cloud where it met clear weather. It was peculiar in that it sat suspended at a level between the ground and the cloud base. As we got nearer to it (we were about 1/2 mile to the east of the cloud), we could see small funnels formed at the cloud's edge and the cloud itself occasionally morphed into a tube-like shape, though not like anything you see from the southern states of the US. Is it possible, given what this group of meteorologists here on Boards.ie know about today's weather, that it was a genuine tornado? Or is there such a thing as a semi-tornado?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Bsal

What you are describing sounds like a funnel cloud and is definetly possible. There was showers associated with CB in the area at the time, or it could have been scud. Pity you didn't get a picture.

slavedave

Thanks - but what is CB and what is a SCUD. I did a- level geography a few decades ago that included a little climatology and meteorology but I am not familiar with those terms.

slavedave

My son tried to video it on his phone but it isn't very clear , to be honest.

Bsal

CB is short for cumulonimbus cloud which is a dense towering vertical cloud associated with thunderstorms and atmospheric instability. Scud is cloud that appears ragged or wispy and can be mistaken for funnels or tornadoes.

slavedave

And I was only telling my son about the classic "anvil" shape of cumulonimbus storm clouds as we approached home (face palm). Sounds like a scud could be what we saw. Thanks for the clarification. Very interesting phenomenon, and just a little exciting too!

Penname

There were a lot of scud clouds about with those showers today. I witnessed some of them form into little vortices, like narrow, fine funnel clouds. Maybe that's what you were seeing?

Harps

Sounds more like scud from your description if it was detached from the main cloud base, you usually see them in turbulent skies where there's a strong updraft and lot of movement going on in the clouds, they're easy to mistake for funnels when they change shape so quickly and appear to be rotating

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/%28Gh%29/wwhlpr/scud.rxml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scud_%28cloud%29

slavedave

Your descriptions lead me to believe they were scud clouds. I had a look at a couple of videos and pics on google and they looked very similar. Thanks again - I will update no.1 son in the morning.
I love Boards.ie - such an informative online community.