An unusual tornado weather phenomena to witness or capture on video was recorded in a Colorado field on Wednesday, AccuWeather reported.
A set of twin tornadoes, also referred to as sisters, were captured by AccuWeather storm chaser Tony Laubach in Akron, about 100 miles east of Denver, amid a disastrous weather pattern that swept through the central United States this week.
The tornadoes touched down in the area and made for “one of the most incredible” sights Laubach has ever witnessed, “especially in the state of Colorado,” the meteorologist reported.
“We do not see storms of that caliber in this state because we are typically a drier climate,” Laubach said.
According to AccuWeather, twin tornadoes develop from two distinct areas of circulation.
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Laubach witnessed on Wednesday a single large cone tornado form another smaller twister, and almost a third one before it dissipated. The event occurred the same night that heavy hail storms injured some concertgoers during Louis Tomlinson’s performance at Red Rocks Amphitheater. In some locations, hailstones were as large as baseballs, Laubach said.
The dew point, which helps forecasters analyze how much moisture is in the atmosphere, was near record levels in eastern Colorado on Wednesday, which helped fuel the intense storms.
Wind from the tornado-producing thunderstorm knocked power poles onto a road and flipped an RV over, Laubach said, but no structures were hit.
Are twin tornadoes rare?
Although AccuWeather reports that twin tornadoes are “one of the rarest tornadic phenomena that even some veteran storm chasers have never witnessed,” this belief, while common in the meteorological community, doesn’t accurately portray frequency, according to The Weather Channel.
“Now that there are so many people observing tornadoes up close, it seems likely that multiple tornadoes from a single supercell occur much more frequently than previously thought,” Weather Channel’s Tom Moore reported. “One of the most interesting aspects of meteorology is that every situation is unique and events that produce multiple tornadoes can be different and with varying results.”
Small singular tornadoes are the most common type of twister, but double, and even triple, quad or quintuple tornadoes are not that unusual either, they’re just hard to see, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). According to NOAA, the reason we don’t see double tornadoes often is because most of the time they’re obscured by dust and debris.
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One of the most iconic examples of twin tornadoes occurred in 2014 near Pilger, Neb., which left two people dead.
