This Evening's Ft. Lauderdale Tornado

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Above is the tornado earlier this evening as it moved east across the Ft. Lauderdale Metro. The frame above was about a second after a power flash, which is an electrical short circuit. The yellow-gold color are the remaining sparks. Fortunately, only about 600 people are without power at this time. No injuries have been reported. 

Unfortunately the NWS's tornado warning on this classic supercell tornado was late -- which happened far too many times in 2023.

The photo below shows a "wall cloud" -- a rotating area of cloud behind the tornado. This is about as classic a tornadic supercell as you will see either visually or on radar in the Great Plains or Midwest.
Rich Healey/Spectrum News 1

This how the storm looked on radar about 20 minutes before the the tornado.  
At 4:24p, there was a "hook echo" (left) and a "couplet" of rotating winds (the green and red coming together near Davie). Given the highly conducive atmospheric conditions for tornado formation, I'm certain I would have issued a tornado warning at this time had I been on the warning desk at WeatherData, Inc. 

Unfortunately, the tornado warning was not issued until 5:45pm. 
The National Weather Service's goal is to issue a tornado warning 13 minutes before a tornado touches down. This certainly was not met in this situation. 

This is a topic I am woking on and I hope to have more information for you later this month. 

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