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May 31, 1998 Storm Chase

On May 30th, in the afternoon, I had heard that there would be some very active weather moving into southern Ontario in the morning the next day. A cold front was going to move across Lake Huron, bringing severe thunderstorms with it. This same storm had brought severe weather in the Midwest during the afternoon. At 10:30 p.m., Environment Canada had issued a severe thunderstorm watch for southern Ontario. They had said that the storm could hit in the morning, with a chance of a tornadoes, but they had also said that they might hit over night. I had a strong feeling that they would issue a tornado watch in the morning. On May 31st, I woke up at 7:00 am. I looked out the window to see if it had rained over night. I laid in bed, having a "sick" feeling in my gut. I was afraid that I had missed the action. Fortunately, it was still dry outside. I listened to my walkman radio to check the weather forecast. A radio station had said that the severe thunderstorm watch had been upgraded to a tornado watch. Excitement soon filled the air. I quickly jumped out of bed and got dressed in a time period of about five minutes. Funny... I never get dressed that fast on school days. The current weather conditions at 7:00 am were as follows: temp: 20 degrees Celsius, humidity: 86%, dew point: 16 degrees, wind: S 15 km/h, visibility: 4.8 km, and barometer: 100.12 kPa. I called my chase partner and uncle, Dave Szozda, to see if he felt like going storm chasing. At 8:30 am, the storm hit. The wind was very strong, and the rain came down heavy. There were occasional CG’s. Shortly after 9:00, uncle Dave came over. Rita and I got into the new minivan, and we headed out on the road. We encountered heavy rain and gusty wind as we headed towards Elmira. There was some lightning, but it wasn’t really intense. I had concluded that this storm had developed into that of a squall line, which is a continuous line of intense thunderstorms that usually bring heavy rain, gusty winds, and travel rather quickly. I did not fussy this kind of storm because squall lines usually don’t bring much. However, we did see some mamma clouds, and I had spotted a possible small funnel cloud. It looked smooth and pointy, and grew got a bit long. As it pointed towards the ground, it dissipated. When we reached the small community of Conestogo, we seen numerous tree damage due to the high winds. I saw a large whole tree branch laying on the ground. It turned that this squall line was a bit more intense than the last one that I had chased on March 28. Damage was reported throughout southern Ontario. Power lines were down, and some whole branches fell onto homes. Around 10:30, the storm cleared and we headed back home. Later during that day, I had heard that there was an unconfirmed report of a tornado near Holland Marsh, north of Toronto. We didn't get much video or pix out of this one.