This spectacular supercell storm near Pittsburgh spawned a tornado Wednesday evening

From a severe-weather standpoint, 2018 has been just plain weird. The Great Plains are on track to record their lowest tornado tally since the 1980s, Wyoming has seen two tornadoes rated EF-3 after a 30-year absence, and Pennsylvania bore the brunt of an unusual nighttime tornado that spun up in Wilkes-Barre.

With this much wacky weather across the country, it comes as no surprise that one of the most picturesque supercell thunderstorms of the year hovered over a place far from the traditional tornado alley.

One lonely supercell thunderstorm formed just north of Interstate 70 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania on Wednesday evening and produced a tornado, the National Weather Service confirmed Thursday afternoon. Towering tens of thousands of feet into the sky, the storm was a menacing and mesmerizing sight.

Advertisement

After it formed, the storm threaded the needle between Mount Pleasant and Youngwood, about 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. With enough vorticity (or rotation) in the atmosphere, the storm quickly began spinning, taking on a kidney-bean shape on the radar as it ingested warm humid air from the south.

Check it out! Radar recap of the Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania LP supercell thunderstorm. The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh is out investigating today to determine if a tornado did in fact touch down. pic.twitter.com/CwhRcYitEm

While competing storms and a lack of daytime heating began to starve the cell of “fuel” shortly after 8 p.m., that didn’t stop it from spinning. The rotating thunderstorm prompted a tornado warning from the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh.

Tornado sirens sounded in Mount Pleasant as the ominous, striated cylindrical cloud base descended on the north side of the area. The “low precipitation” nature of this supercell thunderstorm meant that flooding rain and destructive hail were not a problem —  but the two-mile-wide vortex lowering from the cloud base posed a hazard. Picture a giant, swirling hockey puck in the sky. With striated edges and funnel-like tendrils below, it’s a scene that looks less like fact and more like fantasy.

Zack Frailey captured the incredible structure of the Plains-style storm. He watched it “rotate” and eventually “dissipate” as the setting sun choked off surface instability. In his photo, the updraft — where air swirls in and rises upward — floats like an evil birthday cake, with layer after layer visible towering high into the sky.

Tornado injures 8 in Kansas town, part of towering, ‘jaw-dropping’ complex of storms (Photos)

Here’s another photo of the storm, posted to Twitter:

Advertisement

The Weather Service received at least three reports of wind damage from the storm. In a public information statement Thursday morning, it announced it would be on the scene conducting damage surveys throughout the afternoon, during which it will estimate how strong and wide the tornado was, and how long it was on the ground.

The eyewitness video below suggests it was a rather small twister:

Capital Weather Gang’s Jason Samenow contributed to this report.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLumw9JompqomamurXnWnpitoJWneqitzaBmsKhfZ31yhI5pbWhqaGTBqbXSZqqpnZOprqTBy5qpZqulpbKzr8Slo2arpKS%2FrnnNnpirZaCewbW%2Fwa6poKBdobasscuyZKyokay7prCMmmStp6KjrqW7jLCcnaaVqLGixYyerZ6mmaO0cA%3D%3D