Take a look at the radar image (left).

What do you think of that small, narrow echo in Falls County (the one with the yellow circle around it)? Does is look like it might be able to produce a tornado?

Well, the atmosphere never ceases to amaze, and something happened in Falls County late Monday afternoon that has severe storm researchers buzzing!

Bill Purcell, a storm chaser from Houston, spent two hours watching a towering cloud that ultimately produced a tornado, the same system that you see in the radar image.

Click Here To See Bill Purcell’s Incredible Photographs

What makes the Falls County tornado so unusual is the cloud that produced it.

Tornadoes are almost always produced by thunderstorms, or by towering cumulus clouds that are about to become thunderstorms.

Bill told me that in the two hours that he spent watching this cloud, he never saw any lightning, never heard any thunder.

Yet, the cloud very clearly has all of the structure normally associated with a supercell thunderstorm.

Supercell storms are generally characterized as high precipitation (HP), classic, and low precipitation (LP).

The cloud shown in Bill's photographs is almost like a skeleton of an LP-supercell.

Another unusual feature of this storm system was that is remained virtually stationary for several hours.

Earlier in the day, a similar storm system (but one without a tornado) was located over southern McLennan County, northern Bell County, and northern Falls County.

Very heavy rain fell over a narrow zone from west of Moody to north of Marlin. It is possible that this zone of wet soil may have influenced the behavior of the cloud/storm system Monday afternoon.

That's because the standing water and wet soil would have created a zone where the air temperature was lower than in surrounding areas that were not as wet. (Evaporation from the wet areas would have been much greater than in other areas, and evaporation cools the air.

The interface between the cooler air and warmer air would be a likely place for storms to develop during the afternoon.)

I am examining several of these issues and putting the results of my research on my own website.

Click Here For Lon’s Web Site

The information shown there will change from time to time as I gather additional data, process it, and evaluate it.

If you have any comments about this unusual event, please send them to me at lon.curtis@kwtx.com.