these vortices as supercritical in the sense of [@fiedlerrotunno86]. Analysis of the work in [@barcilon67; @Burggraf77; @benjamin62] suggests that the supercritical vortex below a vortex breakdown has its volume and its length decrease as the energy of the supercritical vortex increases. This suggests that the entropy (randomness of the vortex) is decreasing when the energy is increased [@vortexgas17]. Hence the inverse temperature, which is the rate of change of the entropy with respect to the energy of the vortex, is negative. This temperature has to be considered in the statistical mechanics sense and is not related to the molecular temperature of the atmosphere. Such vortices would be barotropic, however their origin could very well be baroclinic. Recent results suggest that vorticity is produced baroclinically in the rear-flank downdraft and then descends to the surface, where it is tilted into the vertical, contributing to tornadogenesis. Even more recently, simulations show vortices produced in the forward flank region contributing to tornadogenesis and maintenance [@orf17]. Once these vortices come into contact with the surface, and the stretching and surface friction related swirl (boundary layer effects) are in the appropriate ratio, then by analogy with the work in [@fiedlerrotunno86] the vortex would have negative 