Blink, And You've Missed It

A squall line with the ingredients for tornadic spin-ups embedded in it blew through Henry County, Iowa after 7:00 pm CDT on Saturday, June 20, 2015. The image above clearly shows the leading edge of the storm in the background as it was moving right-to-left at 7:21 pm. Literally moments later, a pencil-shaped tornado (arrow), appeared and disappeared instantaneously from the spinning, churning leading edge of the storm in the image below. This tornado was not even noticed until my post-image processing was done later that night.

Trailing the phantom tornado was the low-hanging circulation seen in the two images below, captured a few moments later than the top two. An obvious vortex of precipitation swirls below it. Several of these leading-edge mini spin-ups produced quick funnels, which appeared and disappeared in a matter of seconds. Location is US Highway 34, about 3.25 miles southeast of the town of Mount Pleasant. Images look southwest. Nikon D5000 DSLR camera.