RF from Tornadoes

I don't believe tornadoes produce RF signals. I looked (Google) for anything about a tornado generating an RF signal. The only thing I found was articles on Doppler radar. All of the weather radar systems operate in the GHz region, a much higher frequency than the VHF channel 5. The guard band between VHF channels 4 and 5 starts at 72MHz and ends at 76MHz.

Lightning in a storm that produces a tornado will certainly have a very broad spectrum of RF signals. At Georgia Tech, they are researching the combination of data from lightning, Doppler radar, and acoustic signatures to improve tornado tracking.

This was before the GHZ bands Doppler Radar: the 1960-70's.

Notice that the gap between channel 4 and 5 is 10 MHZ, vs 6Mhz band, for other channels.

It is in between the frequency of the Audio Carrier of 4 and 5 where it is most noticeable:71.75 MHZ ---81.75 MHZ.

band I)

I found a few articles on rf emissions of tornados:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JC080i030p04117

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169809508003165

Cool. Both of those publications are behind a paywall, so I could not get into the details. The introductions show that I was wrong about non-lightning-related RF being produced by tornadoes. (I do miss having access to academic publishers.) I presume Doppler radar must provide some additional information (tracking location, severity, and precursor conditions) that a simple RF receiver array can provide about a tornado.

I doubt this phenomenon can be exploited to manipulate a tornado. It would be like trying to get my FM receiver to change the music a DJ was playing on my favorite station. I know how to jam the station so nobody can hear that recording, but I cannot change the broadcast.

Yeah, paywall and you get a 50 odd years ago paper.

As you pointed out, there doesn’t seem to be very much published about this phenomenon.

I suspect that Doppler radar works better and more reliably than any static discharge, and it provides a picture of where the tornado is and where it is heading.

Not directly, having worked in a dust environment that would creat static, can blowing dust also created RF? Yes it can.

This is pushing my limits.. So, AI helped. Heres how.

• Triboelectric effect: When dust particles rub against each other or other surfaces (like in wind storms or industrial processes like mining), they can become electrically charged. The rapid movement and separation of these charged particles can generate electrostatic discharges, which, in turn, can produce electromagnetic radiation in the form of RF waves. This effect is a natural phenomenon where friction causes charge transfer between materials.
• Scattering of RF waves: While not creating RF waves from scratch, dust particles in the air can scatter existing radio waves, especially at higher frequencies. The size of the dust particles determines the frequency range that can be significantly affected.

That is what I gather from the linked articles. The tornado itself is the wind, the column of air. The stuff carried along is what causes occasional spurious rf emissions, but is not really considered to be a part of a tornado.

So… the tornado itself does not emit rf. The shingles, dust, screen doors, tree branches, house cats, etc. all the stuff carried along within the cone, all banging together create this rf phenomenon.

So… to answer the OP question, I speculate that any magnetic field or transmitted rf field would have zero effect on a twister.

Oh, no heartburn here my friend. Post away.

As I said in another thread, HTRN brings us a wide variety of things to chew on.

Time to hook up a spectrum analiser to my sandblasting cupboard, after all it can generate some fair size sparks to the frame and it is a good thing we wear rubber gloves saves us from the shocking experience.

It takes thousands of volts to produce a spark. It is hard to explain how dragging your feet across the carpet can generate that much voltage. Charge transfer is still a bit of a mystery even to the best physicists. Basic principles do not explain it sufficiently.

Is there a voltage potential between the moon and the Earth during the different phases?

Things I wonder about in the middle of the night while conferring with my Moose Head beer and the one mounted on the wall. Not my muse; That is another story altogether.

Heres a funny story... At least to me.

Were i worked we where having problems with our palletiser, where it would wrap plastic around the pallet, its simular to saram wrap.

The plastic due to the static build-up would would be so great, that it would cling to everything, and would shut down the palletiser, and I had to solve.

I had one of programers there also to program the HMI on a different issue, he asked what i was doing, i told him, he didn’t beleive me.

Now i dont want to get religous here, but i beleive God has a sense of humor, because that programer walked over to the roll of plastic about 40’-50’ away, mocking me, he reach over to pull on the roll, and with a large ’crack’ a blue spark jump about 4“ and zapped him, well, he then did a song and dance that im not going to repeat.

Also 1/2“ x 4’ x 8’ UHMW sheets are notorious for this.

Bubble wrap too!

Here's a semi-related topic. I'm in Stark County in NE Ohio. We have a weather phenomenon that a newspaper guy called "The Stark County Split." (that was my first awareness of such a thing--many years ago.) It seems that others have observed it too. When a storm pattern is coming in from the west, it tends to divide and some goes north of us and some to the south. Why?

Even the clouds haven't forgotten the Revolution, some form a confederation and others join the union.