The Garden City, Kansas, Storm during VORTEX 95. Part II: The Wall Cloud and Tornado

Abstract

On 16 May 1995, a supercell storm produced an F1 tornado near Garden City, Kansas, during VORTEX (Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment). This event provided the first opportunity to synthesize data collected by a new airborne radar platform called ELDORA (Electra Doppler radar) developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The evolution of the low- and midlevel mesocyclone was presented in a companion paper. In this paper, the sequence of events that triggered tornadogenesis within the mesocyclone circulation is shown. The occlusion downdraft, documented in Part I, appears to promote ?vortex breakdown? resulting in the generation of multiple vorticity centers. It is one of these centers that intensifies into the Garden City tornado. The structural relationship between the observed wall cloud and the radar reflectivity associated with the developing hook echo and the kinematic wind field is also presented. Although the wall cloud appears to be uniform there are pronounced asymmetries in the echo and ground-relative flow fields.