The Funing tornado was associated with a supercell storm that had a pronounced hook echo seen from an operational S-band Doppler radar located at Yangcheng that was within 50 km of the storm. A strong, well-definded mesocyclone is seen in the Doppler velocity data while tornado-vortex signatures closely track the ground damage track. A realtime experimental 4-km-grid-spacing forecast initalized at 0800 LST (0000 UTC) produced several supercell storms in the vicinity of the observed tornado, with the southernmost supercell being the strongest (as was observed) and producing a 2-5 km updraft helicity maximum center that is the strongest between 1400 and 1500 LST (the Funing tornado period) and follows a similar west-to-east track as the observed tornado. Additional experiments are performed assimilating Doppler radar and dense surface data at higher spatial resolutions. Results of these data assimilation experiments and associated anayses will be presented at the conference, together with ground and arial damage survey information.
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