Is This A Tornado?

Let me first say that I support the decision of the National Weather Service 100%. They ruled the damage in Mississippi County as straight-line wind damage and there is a good chance that it WAS straight-line wind damage, BUT maybe that damage was not caused by what I see in the above video. If this is a tornado, it appears to be over the Big Lake area and there is really not much for it to damage in that part of the county. If you look close, you can see some trees getting knocked around and some water being kicked up... but there are not any homes, cars, etc in the path. Yes, it is possible to have damage from straight-line winds... and have a tornado nearby.

In my opinion, this is a tornado. It's a weak tornado, but a tornado. The NWS did a great job issuing the warning on this storm, because the radar signatures were not overly impressive. I believe there was one scan that showed the rotation. I showed that radar image in an earlier blog post.

So, what do you think? Is it a tornado? Comment in the comments section...

Ryan