The southern Plains of the US are now in the midst of “ tornado season ” , but this year ’s bloom of fierce storms has already brought with it one of the most unusual types of twister – one that spin clockwise .
On the evening of April 30 , a sinewy thunderstorm known as asupercellmade its agency east across Oklahoma . Not only do supercells often bring strong winds and large hailstones , but they can also engender tornadoes , and this one birthed multiple .
That ’s not incisively an rum occurrence given that crack produced by supercells are themost commonkind , but around 10:26 pm CDT , near the township of Loveland , the tempest yield rise to a super - rare anticyclonic tornado .
twister that occur in the Northern Hemisphere usually rotate counterclockwise , but in an estimated1 percent of cases , they instead whirl clockwise . Such anticyclonic tornado are usually fairly weak , crack psychoanalyst Paul Robinson told theWashington Postin 2013 .
ⓘ IFLScience is not creditworthy for content shared from external sites .
On this social function , however , the unusual tornado continued to go against conventionality as it remained powerful , with the National Weather Service ( NWS ) putting out astatementdeeming the tornado as “ big and extremely dangerous ” . Luckily , it occurred mostly over tilled land , with no reported casualties – just a lot ofuprooted Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree .
The statement also revealed that at one power point , the crack cocaine achieved something else out of the ordinary : it was “ nearly stationary ” , or at the very least go extremely slowly .
“ It ’s not coarse to see ( twister ) be nearly stationary , ” NWS meteorologist Rick Smith explained toCNN . “ crack are almost always going to just go wherever the supercell electrical storm goes . ”
This atypicaltornadowas far from the only one set about things a bit backward that day . unremarkably , crack cocaine in the US travel from west to east , but the female parent supercell popped out another unpredictable young that ended up looping back over the path it just take .
harmonize to Smith , it ’s possible that the two strange tornadoes were even active at the same time . “ You certainly do n’t see this every solar day , ” said the meteorologist .
Though tornado can fall out at any fourth dimension , the springtime months usually see an uptick in storm in the US , with the peak “ tornado season ” for states such as Oklahoma pass from May to early June and through to July further north . The spark advance up to this year ’s season has been jolly meddlesome , with the NWS Storm Prediction Centerreportinga preliminary figure of 300 tornadoes in the US during April , the second high public figure for the calendar month on track record .