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| A mesocyclone within Typhoon Saola's convection, as in satellite imagery
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I always pay attention in weather news especially for an upcoming typhoon. What ever happens last Sunday night on July 29, 2012 at around 10PM, up to Monday morning is no ordinary typhoon. For the first time in my living history, a Mesocyclone hit Metro Manila.
Mesocyclones are believed to form when strong changes of wind speed and/or direction with height (wind shear) sets parts of the lower part of the atmosphere spinning in invisible tube-like rolls. The convective updraft of a thunderstorm is then thought to draw up this spinning air, tilting the rolls' orientation upward (from parallel to the ground to perpendicular) and causing the entire updraft to rotate as a vertical column.
