Have you snapped a shelf cloud or ominous cumulonimbus? Email your photo to - or visit /clouds to view photos from your fellow readers. To join the Scary Looking Cloud Club, email photos to The club's website is at Send us your photos of scary clouds When he saw a dark cloud near the United Parcel Service office in Delafield on May 30 he snapped a picture and sent it to Kapela. He used to live in Oklahoma and has witnessed his share of tornadoes. It was scraping the ground and looked like a tornado," said Purdy, who works for Waste Management in Janesville.īodily owns MasterGuard Pest Control in Pewaukee and checks the National Weather Service's website frequently. "It was just after dark so there wasn't any ambient light and we could see it through the lightning strikes. His most recent picture on the club page was taken last month of a shelf cloud that formed in southern Dane County. The Scary Looking Cloud Club photos help train tornado spotters, Purdy said, because there are so many tornado lookalikes that can fool people into thinking a twister is just about to form. He took a spotter training class several years ago and as an amateur storm chaser, he also posts his pictures on the Wisconsin Weather & Photography Facebook page he runs with a friend. Tom Purdy, 32, of Janesville has several photos posted on the club site that he's taken on his Canon EOS Rebel T3i. He's hoping to add scary looking cloud photos from Asia and Australia. Many are from people in Wisconsin, though he also gets them from almost every state as well as South Africa, Canada, the Netherlands and Germany. Since Kapela started the Scary Looking Cloud Club in 2009, combined with free tornado spotter classes - which have been taken by more than 40,000 people in Wisconsin since 1994 - "the perception is there are fewer numbers of false tornado reports," Kapela said.Įvery month scary cloud photos are emailed to Kapela, who posts most of them on the club's webpage accessed through the Sullivan National Weather Service office's site. As Jeff Last, the warning coordination meteorologist at Green Bay's National Weather Service office, explains to spotters - if it doesn't spin, don't call it in. If the clouds are not rotating, they're not tornadoes. And if hills or trees block someone's view, they can appear like they're touching the ground. Twisters rarely develop underneath or near shelf clouds though sometimes the clouds can look funnel-shaped. Shelf clouds often look like big waves or snow plows and appear menacing because they're low-hanging. Sometimes rising cloud motion can be seen in the outer parts of shelf clouds while underneath the cloud is turbulent. Most clouds that quicken pulses are actually cloud fragments or shelf clouds - low, horizontal-shaped arcus clouds normally associated with a thunderstorm gust front, though sometimes they form with a cold front. "When people get scared some call 911 dispatch offices and report funnel clouds and tornadoes, and the dispatchers have to log in that information and then they call us at the National Weather Service," said Kapela, who will continue the website after he retires Sept. It's especially timely considering the seven tornadoes reported last week in Wisconsin, bringing this year's tally to 14. The brainchild of Rusty Kapela, a warning coordination meteorologist in Sullivan, the club is designed to show pictures of scary looking clouds, explain their origins and reduce the number of false tornado reports to 911 operators. Sure there are plenty of pictures and videos on the web and YouTube of tornadoes, spiraling funnel clouds and twisters wreaking havoc. No dues required, no entry fee or initiation, just folks who notice creepy clouds, take pictures and send them to the club's site. When an ominous gray cloud darkened the sky over Pewaukee a few months ago, Lance Bodily pulled out his Android smartphone and snapped a picture.īodily, 31, emailed the picture to the National Weather Service office in Sullivan, and when it was posted on the agency's website a few days later he became a member of the Scary Looking Cloud Club.
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