What I find most amazing, is that almost three quarters of the pictures are not of tornados at all, but of mesocyclones.

There certainly is a place called Bunbury, in Western Australia - a small coastal town approx, 30,000 people and I live here ..........
We certainly did have a huge tornado here on Monday 16th May - and it did cause a lot of damage - including moving a cathedral off its foundations. The pictures you can see of house, business damage are definately real - I can give street addresses for these.
The pictures of the "actual" tornado ?? I don't believe these are local - for a start it was pitch dark (6.10 am) when it hit - and is only recorded as being 100m across but it did 'hit' a swath of damage along a 10Km 'stretch'. The "landscape" in those photo's is totally strange to me !!.

Damn strange weather we've been having lately. First it's water restrictions, now massive storms and tornados.

And despite the storms, we'll still be on water restrictions for the foreseeable future. The weather bureau is still saying that it's going to be a drier than average winter here in Perth.

And looking at this week's forecast, I'll believe it - no rain predicted until this time next week!

I work for the Western Australian Agriculture Department. One of the photos has an unfenced suger crop in it. bunbury has no sugar crops, and no unfenced crops. These ARE very fake.

I did a round up a while ago of storm photos that had been floating around that day

I put them together on a site so you can see the real storm...

http://www.t00l.net/storm/

Okay, let me straighten some of you out, Otay? The Coriolis Effect refers to the effect of moving bodies in relation to the rotation of the Earth... that's all fine and dandy when we talk about the atmosphere, but we are talking about a downward, gravity-driven movement, turned into rotation not by the movement of the atmoshere in relation to the Earth's rotation, but by its relative latitudinal postion to the Earth's poles. It's a gravity-driven process, not a deflective process of the atmosphere. Damn. Read a book

Okay, final clarification: The storm rotation? Coriolis Effect. Yes. Definately. The sink/drain rotation? Relative Latitude. Okay? Okay. Quiz on this tomorrow, so cram big-time. That's my motto: Cram It.

harry are you sure? I just tried to look it up on the internet, here's some webpages I found:
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/fw/crls.rxml
and here's another one:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/coriolis-understanding.htm
there's a whole bunch by just googling "coriolis effect"
It's caused by a deflection process by the earth's rotation. Are you maybe thinking of tides?

Or do I just not understand it at all. As I wrote in my first post on it, I can't pretend to be an expert, that's just the way I've always understood it. I could just be misinterpreting it.

After living in the US for the best part of 2001 and growing up in Australia. Let me blow some myths for the US readers.
Kangaroos generally don't roam the streets of Australia.
Sydney is not the capital
The water spins in the opposite direction in Australia as it drains from sinks and toilets.

Hi, these are categorically NOT photos from the storm in Westerm Australia recently - apart from the fact that it is inconceivable that none of our parochial little media outlets (print or electronic) have run these photographs, I'd draw your attention to the vehicles in two of the photos - they're driving on the right-hand side of the road (we drive on the left)! Sorry guys, these ain't from here! Brian

Bleeding heck, how many more times do we have to post this: The storm photos are a hoax--they are from the collection of 2004 storm photos on the Extreme Instability site. They were in Iowa, USA, not Bunbury, and can be seen in their original state here:

http://extremeinstability.com/2004photos.htm

Well, the corn is not setting, and the rapseed isn't flowering, because in Asutralia it is coming on to winter. They are a hoax, and great to look at!

The tornado was real alright, there has been untold damage, but it has only effected some parts of the town.
I do agree that the above pictures are strange as I can not recognise any scenery.

From the perspective of a storm chaser here in Texas, I would say that the several pictures I've seen of this particular "Bunbury Storm" appear to be different storms. I also believe these to be in the Midwest also. While I'm not very familiar with the geography of WESTERN AUSTRALIA, I'd say that the frontal boundary would have had to be very significant to cause the convection needed to generate a super cell like the one in these photos. Smaller storms can be tornadic too, but don't usually look like this one. The rotation is definately counter clockwise, which also suggests this was in the Northern Hemisphere, although, there was a storm a few years back in Paris TX I think, that actually rotated the oposite direction, so this can't be ruled out. The 6 or 7 photos I've seen appear to be at different times of the year (Harvest) and at different times of the day. Typically, the storm reaches maturity, does the damage and disipates rather rapidly. Although very rare, this storm appears to have a very long life especially as the meso-cyclone (wall cloud) is so close to the ground during broad daylight, and there is not much disipation between then and sunset. My vote is these are a couple of mid summer storms in the south central plains here in the US. Trust me, it's no honor to have one of these knocking on your door.

Hi everyone, i live in Mandurah WA and copped some pretty harsh effects from the storm, and looking at the supposed bunbury photos it would be rather cool to think that a storm like that passed over us, but i don't think so. It has been brought to my attention that a few cars in one of the photos are actually driving on the opposite road to what we do here in Australia. And i have spent a lot of time in Bunbury having grown up in the area, and that is not Bunbury landscape, not at all. They were cool pictures though

Hey, i also realised that after i posted my fact revealing letter, that someone has also ready mentioned the same facts as what i did. Lets just say, im sitting at home drinking Southern Comfort and having a hell of a blonde day. Cheers.

hello everyone i am from bunbury and there is only one of these photo that look remotely like "bunno"

one of these photos have a paddock and in the paddock is a nice big green crop of something. in bunbury we are not in the growing season yet and we are just about to seed which means put the seed in the ground now this crop in the photo looks like its ready to be harvested people dont believe these photos. bunbury is not like these at all

Going from orientation of the road signs this has to be taken in America or some country where they drive on the right side of the road. That should put Australia out of the running.

Really awesome shots, but if this is anywhere near Bunbury W.A., then I'm a monkey's uncle. Try mid-west USA. Here's what I think gives it away....
- Lack of Australian scenery, in particular, gum trees
- American style barn with flagpole in frame 7
- reverse cyclonic rotation in the wall clouds and tornado (i.e., northern hemisphere) frames 3,4 and 8
- approaching car appears to be on wrong side of road in frame 2
- incorrect storm type, instead of a spring/summer supercell should have been a winter frontal system 〈cloud in frame 6 would be plausible if not for the scenery〉

I am familiar with the countryside near Bunbury and it is mostly well forested with hills in the distance, Tuart trees are a frequent large gum in the area, with plenty of Marri/Jarrah forest around. The flat coastal areas tend to peppermint and paperbark swamps. Bunbury itself is a reasonable sized city with a hill in the middle of it that you can see for miles around.

READ THE BLOODY THREAD!!! Sheeshhh and Bleeding heck, how many more times do we have to post this: The storm photos are a hoax--they are from the collection of 2004 storm photos on the Extreme Instability site. They were in Iowa, USA, not Bunbury, and can be seen in their original state here:

http://extremeinstability.com/2004photos.htm

Weighing in here after the gunfire has died down. Interesting to note that even though a single quick visit to the link posted by shel on May 21 established indisputable bona fides for the origin of these images, the debate continued for almost 3 more weeks. Maybe us humans are so easy to hoax cuz we likes it.

Just from looking at the photos, I could tell they were the midwest:
Vehicles on the right side of the road
The street sign
The corn and soy bean crops
And it's flatter than $#@!

I'm moving back to Montana!

ok i live in bunbury, for starters... the storms went through about 6am. not after getting to werk at 8.30am. outside was darker during the day than in any of these pictures. and the landscapes, the only places near bunbury that are open spaces and full of grassed areas are the collie/brunswick hills areas. all not flat as in these pics. bloody top pictures, but as far as im concered every 1s been had.

READ THE THREAD. READ THE THREAD. READ THE THREAD.

As I said back in May.......
"Bleeding heck, how many more times do we have to post this: The storm photos are a hoax--they are from the collection of 2004 storm photos on the Extreme Instability site. They were in Iowa, USA, not Bunbury, and can be seen in their original state here:

http://extremeinstability.com/2004photos.htm
Posted by shel on Wed May 25, 2005 at 08:37 AM"

_We_ haven't been had, _we_ know where they're from.

Shel.

Actually . . . I posted the link to the original non-bunbury photos in this forum on May 21. Alas and alack, still we have debate . . . .

Sorry, shel. People are dumb. And tend not to read what anyone else has posted.
*shrugs*

Hi,

Not only have these photographs been incorrectly circulated as a hoax under this name it has under other names as well unfortunately. And in one known case, it may have been submitted to one of the US channels incorrectly authored by someone in Texas. Mike Hollingshead has had to unfortunately come to terms with losing control of an absolutely awesome set of photographs.

Here they are again, this time in Canada....

Last Friday (Aug 18) a severe storm came through the Toronto area. We don't usually get storms that bad, so everyone was really impressed.

It took exactly 1 week for these photos to show up in my inbox with the caption, "Photos taken near Orangeville during last Friday's storm! Isn't nature amazing!?!" (Orangeville is in a rural area NW of Toronto.)

Where will they appear next? Anywhere but Iowa, no doubt.

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