those r impressive and clear photos of the wall cloud(pic #1), Ants. indo girl, they are real. Tornado is very common is US (tornado alley) and occasionally in canada too. It happen when all the condition is right. Like hurricanes, it start out as a baby storm cloud. Under right condition (cold & warm air fronts, jet stream, thermos, etc) a supercell is form. Even that may not yield a tornado. The wall cloud can have lightning(pic #2), or if rotates, u get a tornado. Wall Cloud - A localized, persistent, often abrupt lowering from the rain-free base of a thunderstorm cloud. Wall clouds can range from a fraction of a mile up to nearly five miles in diameter, and normally are found on the south or southwest (inflow) side of the thunderstorm. When seen from within several miles, many wall clouds exhibit rapid upward motion and cyclonic rotation. However, not all wall clouds rotate. Rotating wall clouds usually develop before strong or violent tornadoes, by anywhere from a few minutes up to nearly an hour. Wall clouds should be monitored visually for signs of persistent, sustained rotation and/or rapid vertical motion here is a link to picture of edmonton's 1987 tornado(F4), right on top of the city. http://www.ee.ualberta.ca/~rob/tornado87.htm
i think there is a slight error in the supercell diagram(b). the wall cloud is more commonly located near the middle to the trailing end of the supercell, usually not at the leading edge as illustrated.
wow those pictures are interesteng a few are a little scary...but ants the 1st one remindes me of the scene from independence day where the alien ship comes into the earths atmosphere.
The first 3 pics that Ants put up remind me of that scene from the movie - Independance day; where the big ass alien ship appears in our atmosphere..
I hope the person who took the pic is OK. From my experience, the funnel cloud can be very unpredictable.
