MADISON, Wis. – Southern Wisconsin experienced two types of severe weather Friday evening. Impacts to power were minimal however, a dramatic supercell caught the eyes of many.
The first type of severe weather was a supercell thunderstorm which developed near Platteville around 3 pm. Our First Warn Queen B Radio Skycam caught a developing wall cloud looking southwest towards Dickeyville. The First Warn Weather team relayed this to the National Weather Service in La Crosse, prompting them to deploy storm spotters in Grant County.
That storm soon prompted a severe thunderstorm warning, shortly followed by a tornado warning in parts of Grant, Lafayette, and Green counties. A supercell thunderstorm is a rotating thunderstorm, and the whole thunderstorm is rotating from top-to-bottom.
First Warn Weather’s Chief Meteorologist Alex Harrington says this is why many viewers sent in photos and videos that look like a “spaceship” cloud structure. “That’s the rotation being seen throughout the depth of the atmosphere in that storm,” says Alex…