At first, I didn't believe it when I opened an e-mail forwarded by the web department of a tornado near West Rd. this evening. But when I saw this photo, I did a double-take:
Thanks to Maria Row, who stopped in this bank parking lot and snapped this picture of a low-hanging cloud, possibly a funnel cloud around 6:25 pm on Houston's north side. So I checked the images on HD Doppler and found this:
Sure enough, there is a storm cell in that location. I didn't see any signs of rotation on the radar, which could be owing to the fact that this could have spun up very quickly. Just a few minutes later, this cell is near the ship channel.
It's not too surprising that a small vortex could have formed, given today's atmospheric conditions. A fast-moving upper-level low pressure system came racing out of west Texas last night and while it didn't encounter very warm air over southeast Texas, it did have a lot of "spin". So as it came over us, it had the capability of lifting the moist air up quickly, where it encountered very cold air. We normally think of the process of convection in the summer-time when warm humid air is lifted and cools rapidly condensing into clouds above the ground. However, if there is enough lift, convection can occur even if the air isn't all that "warm" near the ground. Temperatures in southeast Texas today didn't rise above the mid 50s, Nevertheless, the pictures don't lie. Thankfully, there were no reports of damage and it's possible that this funnel never actually touched the ground.
That upper-level low is now moving away from us but there may be enough moisture that gets wrapped around the wake of the system that clouds could linger for a good part of our St. Patrick's Day. Here's my outlook; we'll definitely need the luck of the Irish to see decent amounts of sunshine. Even with that said, it won't be very warm:
