Several spicy showers passed over Drenthe today. It resulted in beautiful images, including one from Sleen, where a funnel-shaped whirlwind seems to hang under a thundercloud.
“The showers were indeed quite active, with two thunderstorms. The area around Emmen and the vicinity of Meppel and Hoogeveen received the most precipitation,” says RTV Drenthe weatherman Hans Nienhuis.
However, the storm did not produce a tornado. Appearances can be deceiving, says Nienhuis about the above photo of Sharon Hartman from Sleen. “What we see in the quoted photo is not a tornado, but a result of the perspective in which the photo was taken. The photographer is actually looking under the approaching storm.”
“The dark gray, arcuate area away from the photographer is where the storm pulls in air,” said the weatherman. “There the air rises, it condenses, but it doesn’t rain. The smooth light gray spot on the left is the spot of the heavy rainfall. We also see some rainfall to the right of the dark gray structure, which is part of another shower that hangs a bit further away .”
The structure in the photo is called an arcus in meteorological terms. “It is normal with somewhat heavier thunderstorms that have some degree of organization,” Nienhuis explains. “In any case, it has nothing to do with a tornado. It is not rare, but it can be an impressive sight.”
Sharon Hartman took two more photos of the menacing sky above Sleen: