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June 12, 1998 Storm Chase

Uncle Dave, Rita, and I went out on our third chase of the year. We left at 8:10 p.m., and we headed towards Elmira on highway 86. As we were intercepting the storm, I noticed the flanking line out ahead of the storm. It was very dark inside the storm, and it really looked severe. I was thinking that this storm was a non-tornadic small supercell, going by the structure of the storm. We encountered moderate rain, gusty winds, and occasional in-cloud lightning. We headed out towards Listowel, but we had no idea that was were the core was. I took movies and pictures of very nice lowerings, along with the rain shafts. I noticed a bow echo, and I took a picture of it also. The lowerings constantly changed their shape, and it showed me how concentrated the updrafts were. I looked for any signs of a wall cloud, but saw none. We looked toward the west when we pulled off to the side of the road. We saw the sun shining through the clouds, and it was eerie looking, but beautiful. When we were west of Elmira, in Yatton, we encountered very heavy rain mixed with small hail, and really strong winds. This area looked like the core. Had we core-punched? Well, at least we were not in a very dangerous situation. It seemed that wherever we tried to find an asphalt road, we ran into a dirt road. Uncle Dave did not want to take the dirt for fear of getting his nice, new minivan dirty, and I didn’t want to take the dirt road either because mud is slippery and it could cause an accident. So, we decided to follow the previous road that we had took. The sky was orange-brownish looking, and it looked really interesting. I noticed a faint rainbow as we were on highway 86 when we headed back east. The sky looked almost black now, since it was moving away. This storm moved much slower than the squall lines that I had previously chased, and it was way more intense and interesting. As the storm parted, we decided to head back home because it was getting close to dark. We arrived back at home at around 9:05. The next day, I found out that this same storm was responsible for the tornadoes that struck around Illinois, and the tornado that hit southern Michigan. Going by the structure of the storm, and its history, I concluded that this storm might have been a small non-tornadic supercell. In my opinion, this was by far one of the best storm chases that we have had so far this year. We took a lot of video and I snapped a few pix.