Ross Tornado & West Coast Hail - May 12

[Weather Watcher]

There were two small super-cellular storms that produced the hail at Pukekura and the tornado photographed near Ross.

Below is a radar image of the first storm coming onshore at 3:07pm (03:07 UTC) 12 May 2016. This is the storm that produced the large hail. The radar image shows a flare echo (or hail spike) at the rear of the storm (behind the pink 60+ dBZ echoes). This is a signature associated with large hail and is consistent with the hailstones in the photos above. The storm had a well-defined hook echo and most likely also produced a tornado (but not the one at Ross).

[Weather Watcher]

The second storm that produced the Ross tornado came onshore around 3:30pm (not 4pm as reported in the media). This storm was also a small supercell, and had a well defined hook echo as shown in the radar image below.

[Nev]

Wow! Terrific images of the Hook Echos, etc. Thanks Weather Watcher...

[jamie]

Wow cool. So neat to see that structure on NZ radar.

[Manukau heads obs]

great stuff, I could see it was a (small) mesocyclone in the first picture of the tornado is first came shore..by the way of the brighter skies to the right and darker to the left and the circular look to the cloud deck above the tornardo

[mikestormchaser]

Wow great images weather watcher. That's something we normally would see maybe once a year here on the Canterbury plains. The last supercell storm like that showed up on radar was the storm that tore through Mayfield on the 16th Dec 2013 I now know what a hail spike is.. always learning and will never stop learning. Checked out some images on Google. Some of the ones in USA are huge!

[Chris Raine]

I have photos of the landing site for the Rutherglen tornado.I will upload later today

[Chris Raine]

Here is the photo of the Rutherglen Rd tornado landing spot .took out trees and a hedge but lifted off to miss the house

[Chris Raine]

Second shot ,Fire Service attended . House owners happy the house was undamaged but front hedge is munted

[Chris Raine]

Second shot ,Fire Service attended . House owners happy the house was undamaged but front hedge is munted

[Chris Raine]

Appears we had a third tornado at Moonlight Hall near Atarau this large tree lost mature branches 60 feet up just snapped off .Dropping some branches in the tree and others tossed onto the ground took out a water tank as well

[Chris Raine]

Something hit the tree at about the 20 meter level to snap mature branches and leave a complete mess on the ground for about 100 square meters The water tank is still standing, well sort of leaning against another tree now

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Nice ones there Chris

[Lunar2]

Wow neat photos. I have never seen anything like the radar images for nz just seen the us ones. So interesting