Genesis environments and characteristics of the severe tornado in the South Urals on August 29, 2014

Considered are the formation conditions of the severe tornado in the South Urals (in the Republic of Bashkortostan) on August 29, 2014. It is noted that the tornado was associated with the supercell, and the synoptic conditions of its formation corresponded to the type 1 according to the classification proposed by A.I. Snitkovskii in 1987. Estimated are the tornado basic characteristics: the vortex funnel width is 150-200 m, and the maximum wind speed is 65 m/s. It is revealed that the tornado was of EF3 category following the enhanced Fujita scale. Proposed is the simple index of convective instability based on the data of ground-based observations for diagnosing the tornado genesis environments.