Abstract
Abstract One of the distinguishing characteristics of a supercell thunderstorm is the presence of a rotating updraft. During the past 30 years, various hypotheses have been proposed to explain the initiation and maintenance of rotation. However, attempts to verify the initiation process have been frustrated by the lack of multiple-Doppler radar measurements at the time that the first rotating updraft appears. Discussed in this paper are dual-Doppler radar measurements that successfully captured the initiation and evolution of rotation in the Agawam, Oklahoma, storm of 6 June 1979, which occurred during the storm-scale phase of the Severe Environmental Storms and Mesoscale Experiment (SESAME). The process leading to updraft rotation appears to follow that proposed in 1968 by Fujita and Grandoso, whereby a middle-altitude vorticity couplet formed on the downwind flanks of a strong nonrotating updraft, with cyclonic vertical vorticity on the right-forward flank and anticyclonic vertical vorticity on the left...
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