Wall clouds, even those that rotate like a tornado, are attached to the rest of the storm cloud but don’t touch the ground.

As nouns the difference between tornado and mesocyclone is that tornado is (meteorology) a violent windstorm characterized by a twisting, funnel-shaped cloud while mesocyclone is an area of vertical atmospheric rotation in supercell thunderstorms, which signals the threat of a possible tornado.

A mesocyclone is the rotation in the severe thunderstorm. this occurs when the an approaching low pressure cold front advances form the west coast Pacific Ocean, and a low humid windfield forces northward out of the Gulf of Mexico. These mesocyclone events usually happen in an area known as “tornado alley”.

According to the National Weather Service, supercells are the least common type of thunderstorm. However, they are the most dangerous type of thunderstorm because they tend to produce all types of severe weather such as damaging winds, very large hail, and of course, tornadoes.

In rare cases, the entire mesocyclone of HP supercells can touch the ground. The mesocyclone associated with the El Reno supercell nearly touched the ground as per mobile Doppler radar observations, making it nearly impossible to discern any storm related structures.

It may appear to rotate on a horizontal axis. Wall clouds will rotate on a vertical axis, sometimes strongly. The wall cloud is much smaller and more compact than a shelf cloud and is usually under a rain free cloud base. Scud clouds are often mistakenly called wall clouds or funnel clouds.

The long trip leaves the longer wavelength colors (those reds, yellows, and oranges), but scatters the shorter wavelengths out. A few clouds also help the sunrise become more vibrant, but not all types of clouds are good. The best clouds for vibrant colors are the middle-level or high-level clouds.

How then to predict a speccy sunset?

1. Humidity — best when humidity is low but not too low.
2. Cloud coverage — best when between 30 per cent and 70 per cent.
3. Prior rainfall — 2–6 hours before sunrise or sunset is okay, but not during sunrise or sunset.
4. Visibility — the higher the better.

But there’s something else going on in winter. Sunsets become more vivid because of low humidity and cleaner air, especially after it rains. That means there are fewer particulates to wash out colors and create hazy sunsets, which are more typical in summer.

The beautiful colors from a sunset are caused by the atmosphere. As the sun gets lower and lower in the sky, its light passes through more and more air layers—compared to noontime, when the sun is directly overhead. And those layers are filled with dust and water particles.

Because sunlight passes through more particles, the blue and violet wavelengths often can’t make it through, while longer wavelengths of visible light continue their journey, causing warmer colors to appear at sunset. Sunsets can produce more colors than sunrises, which is why you do not want to skip on those either.