Anatomy of a supercell: Here's what sent the storm spinning toward Syracuse

Early Tuesday afternoon a broken line of thunderstorms formed just ahead of a cold front over Ohio, western New York and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, in Central New York it was sunny and very warm. This allowed the atmosphere to destabilize, which basically means the storms had more fuel to form. Thunderstorms build as warm, moist air is ingested. They expel cold and dry air. When the inflow and outflow are relatively balanced, the storm becomes stronger. That was the case Tuesday.

As the line moved into the western Finger Lakes, a couple of individual cells formed ahead of the line in the central Finger Lakes.

One of these storms was near Penn Yan, and it moved northeast into Seneca County. Cold air coming out from this storm triggered a new storm near Aurora.

While this was going on, wind at the surface over the area turned from the south to the southeast. And just above the surface winds were out of the west and increasing in speed.

The Aurora storm moved over Owasco Lake and began to interact with the different winds. This caused it to spin and it became a supercell.

When it was near Owasco, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning that included the city of Syracuse around 5:40 p.m.. As the storm moved into Onondaga County it continued to strengthen and spin faster. The strongest rotation passed just south of downtown Syracuse and then continued toward Jamesville.

To the north of the rotation, heavy rain, strong wind and hail pounded Syracuse.

Since the rotation in supercells is often on the backside of the storm, areas south of the rotation experienced little weather.

Storms continued to track northeast through Oneida and Herkimer counties with additional tornado warnings along its path.

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Anatomy of a supercell: Here's what sent the storm spinning toward Syracuse