Lloyd Colston, Emergency Management Director for the City of Altus captured these shots of a tornado near Hammon, OK today with his Blackberry.

The first tornado of the decade has been issued. To our knowledge at the current time, an actual tornado hasn’t been confirmed – but the warning went out. So what is the lucky area that received it? Texas…Oklahoma?

At the possible expense of sounding “alarmist”, I am personally concerned over storm safety of Florida’s seasonal winter residents. Having been one myself for several years now, I’m surprised at how many people invade the sub-tropical state each winter to escape the harsh cold air and winter storms of the Midwest, although I fully understand their reasoning for doing so.

The National Weather Service in Miami, FL has issued what might just be the final tornado warning of 2009 at 10:27 EST Friday, December 18th.

BUENOS AIRES – A violent storm described as a freak “tornado” killed at least 17 people in the southern part of South America and punched hundreds of houses off their foundations Tuesday, officials said.

A tornado has been reported and has damaged several buildings just north of downtown Minneapolis. At 2:11 local National Weather Service meteorologist say the tornado was reported by the public and has been confirmed.

While the Atlantic Hurricane Season is in full swing, a strong system is moving through the plains and into the Ohio Valley. The Storm Predication Center has issued a Tornado Watch for extreme southeast Iowa, west central and northwest Illinois, and extreme northwest Missouri.

I don’t know what is more thrilling, when you intercept a tornado – or when one of your long-time friends and past tour guest intercepts a tornado. The latter happened today when I received a text message from Nicole saying there was a wicked storm in the Denver area and she was going to head out an “see what she could see”.

22:02Z 3D radar image from KCYS Cheyenne, WY Radar. Notice the yellow lines (precip) wrapping around the updraft. The image below was taken 8 minutes after this radar scan. The tornado was on the ground for over 20 minutes.

Oklahoma University and the National Weather Center cut the ceremonial ribbon on the first NWS quality Dual-Polarization radar this week.

I thought I would put some humor on here and recently re-edited this video. This occurred during Tour 2 in 2007, which is still by far one of the most memorable tours that we’ve conducted. Not only was it memorable because of Dr. Tom allowing us to take a Bic Razor and chop his hair off (yeah – that was funny!), but we saw 12 tornadoes during the week across Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

A recent story by Associated Press writer Holbrook Mohr tells a familiar story – in …

Georgia’s insurance and fire safety commissioner on Monday increased the damage estimate from last …

I have a problem with the wording “Never try to outrun a tornado. Motorist should abandon their vehicles and seek a sturdy shelter or lay in a ditch or other low-lying area.” I understand the underlying reason for this statement is that most people are not familiar with severe storms and they may not know what they are driving into – thus, it is best just to tell them to get out of their cars and jump into a ditch or low-lying area.

There is a very slight chance for tornadoes today across parts of the South and along the Gulf Coast. A 55-65 knot westernly flow in the 700-500 mb level combined with steep mid-level lapse rates and increasing moisture will likely create severe storms anywhere from extreme East Texas to points E/NE later today and through tonight. Most likely threats will be severe hail, strong straight line winds, but even though this appears to be an MCS event, any storms that develop will have a small potential for tornadoes.