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July 24, 1999 Storm Chase

What a day it has been. I've been waiting for months to go chasing, but it has been a dull year for active weather. However, there was something in store for uncle Dave, Rita, and I. Just the day before, practically the whole province was under a severe thunderstorm watch, and my area was outside of it. The next day, at around 4:30 PM, uncle Dave came over and told me that there was a severe thunderstorm watch out. Him and I decided to go quickly take a peek at the developing severe storm off to the north to see if it was worth chasing after. Soon as we saw the storm, we decided that this was the day. We were about to head out on our first chase of the year.

We came back home and I grabbed my chase equipment and asked Rita, my sister, if she wanted to come with us. All of us hopped into the van and we were on our way. We stopped at a local gas station to fill up on some gas. We left at 4:50 PM and headed north, through Elmira, and drove close to the Drayton area. This storm was massive. It looked like it was at its mature stage, and looked multicellular. Off to our west, we also saw this other storm moving eastward. I snapped a few pictures and took some videos. Around 5:30, we got a bit hungry and decided to go grab a bite to eat. We decided to play "the waiting game" and see what storm would be best to go after. Sure enough, a severe thunderstorm warning had been issued at around six o'clock. We headed out again and continued northward, and we noticed that the one that was west of us, moved much closer. That was when we became confused. There was a storm north of us and another one west of us. Which one should we go after? Both looked pretty severe. We had trouble deciding of which storm to chase for about twenty minutes. Uncle Dave switched on the scanner, then we heard that there was a tornado warning out for Wellington county. That's where the northern storm was! Yes! We have our target!

So we continued driving north, to the massive storm. I knew something was in store for us. This storm has got to bring us something. When we reached the Alma area, it hit. The windows streamed with heavy rain and visibility reduced to zero. We pulled over to the side of the road and waited the heavy downpour out. It was interesting to watch, especially after the heavy rain. The sky became very turbulent and it looked like there was a potential for a tornado. I kept my eyes to the sky, looking for a funnel cloud to appear. I saw something that looked like a funnel cloud, but I wasn't sure if it was. Otherwise, nothing developed.

At 7:20, we encountered another similar storm. Heavy rain and pea-sized hail battered the van. We heard a clunk on the windshield and figured it was a larger hailstone. At that time, around 7:30, we heard that a tornado was reported in Beeton, in Simco county at 6:30pm. Warnings of thunderstorms and tornadoes were all over the place. We drove around some more, looking for a funnel, any funnel. I took some more videos. I looked off to the west of the road, and saw a rainbow. We then encountered another heavy downpour, only briefly this time. We could see the heavy rain shafts off in the distance once everything cleared.

Our chase became much more interesting as we headed west. At 8:00 PM, Rita pointed to a spot in the sky, and asked, "What's that?" I looked over to where she was pointing and exclaimed, "That's a wall cloud!" Uncle Dave said, "That's what we're after!" We drove a little closer to the wall cloud. It was nicely shaped. We hardly knew where we were, but somehow, we found ourselves at the spot when we saw the funnel cloud on March 28, 1998. This surprised uncle Dave. We did not realize that we were this close to Elmira. This particular wall cloud looked like it was right over the Kitchener-Waterloo area, an area otherwise known as home. We stayed at the side of the road for about ten minutes, waiting for something to drop from it. It dissipated. No tornado today. After twenty minutes went by, we decided to go watch the lightning activity over Waterloo. We drove on a gravel road, and pulled over. I made the attempt to take lightning pictures, but it was very tough catching a CG. CG's where darting from the sky frequently for ten minutes. The outflow of this storm was rather a moderate, cool wind. After about twenty minutes went by, we decided to head back home. It looked like the activity was over for the day. We arrived home at nine o'clock. I took about twenty one pictures, and took lots of videos. This chase was definitely one that will be remembered.

Total hours: 4 hours

Distance: 184 km