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June 16, 2000 Storm Chase

The day started when I decided to have a look at some of the severe weather discussions on various sites. The Storm Prediction Center had a slight risk out for southern Ontario, and according to the discussions, it sounded like it was going to be an active day. According to SPC, large-scale forcing would shift northeastward into southern Ontario. Mid level temperatures would also be cool to allow the thunderstorms to develop by the early afternoon as strong severe line segments along and ahead of the cold front. And according to Environment Canada, a very warm and increasingly humid air mass would be brought back into the region by southerly breezes. There was a risk of heavy thunderstorms in many areas, including the extreme SW. The day before, EC issued the convective weather statement. They also had a slight risk out for southern Ontario, with damaging winds, torrential downpours and intense lightning late in the day as a cold front moves from the west. I decided to pay a visit to the Vortex100 Storm Chase Page as well, and see what Meteorologist Robert Lattery would be forecasting. According to him, the storm system in the plains would advance southeastward with isolated severe thunderstorms expected to reform along the boundary from central Great Lakes to the southern plains. Moderate instability was expected along and ahead of the cold front, with lifted indices in the -3 to -6 range from southeastern Michigan and southern Ontario into Oklahoma and NW Texas. Very good upper level energy and jet diffluence was expected to mix with very good convergence and lifting to produce widely scattered intense convection late in the afternoon and evening. CAPES were forecasted to reach 2000 J/kg, according to SPC's day one outlook discussion. Weak caps and shear profiles also suggested that the storms would likely evolve into multicell line segments. A band of strong low to mid level flow associated with the southern periphery of jet oriented, perpendicular to the lines, were expected to provide enough support for storms to produce isolated strong to damaging wind gusts.

The first severe thunderstorm watch was issued by EC later that morning, at 11:03 and was in effect until 6:00 PM. The watch was in effect for many areas of southern Ontario, then later got extended to the extreme SW and was in effect until 11:30 PM. Later that afternoon, I emailed EC Severe Weather Researcher, Dave Sills, and asked him if there were any lake breeze frontal boundaries that would help initiate the convection. According to him, there were five boundaries. One of them was extending from Grand Bend to Collingwood, while another one was extending from western Lake Erie to Port Huron, Michigan. There was also another boundary from eastern Lake St. Clair extending to Kitchener. Two other boundaries were east of me. The Lake Ontario boundary went from Burlington to SE of Lake Simcoe, and another one from Lake Erie extended from Long Point to Hamilton. If any of the storms were to enter any of these lake breeze boundaries, they were sure to fire up explosively. I took the information Dave Sills gave me, and drew the boundaries on a map to use as a reference. Like the usual, I ate dinner and logged back into the internet to keep an eye on this situation. I then looked at radar and compared the location of the storms to the location of the boundaries. There was a developing squall line coming off of Lake Huron and entering Bruce county. These cells were interesting, in that each cell was in a line, but they were not connected. The line was formed diagonally, NE to SW, and the NE end cells were less intense than the SW end cells of the line. It seemed to be developing into an asymmetric case squall line.

I reloaded the radar, and sure enough that line had changed its shape. It advance eastward, while some more cells formed over southern Lake Huron. Going by radar, this was sure to be a squall line event. I had been "burned" twice this week so far, but Dave Sills mentioned that my luck should change. A smile went across my face. I was going to have a good chase.

I decided to give Dave Szozda a call, but unfortunately the line was busy. I guessed he was on the internet. I emailed him to see if he was on, but no reply. I got off and called him again on his cell phone and he finally picked up. I told him of the developing squall line and mentioned that we could chat about it over the internet. Him and I logged onto Messenger, a program used to send messages to others, and we discussed the scenario. I kept reloading the radar to get the latest image. The storms really started to develop. Him and I concluded that we should go chase. He logged off, while I was getting my chase gear ready. While waiting for him to come over, I kept reloading the radar image to get the latest image. After a little bit, I finally got a new one. Dave arrived, and I showed him the radar. Then it started to thunder. It turned out that the storm was coming. Dave, Rita and I left at 6:30 PM. We headed north on 86, and we could see the darkening western sky. The storm was already here. I then realized that the line of storms had entered the Grand Bend to Collingwood lake breeze boundary and fired up. This was a classic example of how lake breeze boundaries effect the formation of southern Ontario's severe storms.

When we headed NW on 86, I looked off to the north and saw some nice inflow features, including some lowerings. I got out of the "Storm Descender" and took videos of the features. It then started to rain, so I went back in the van. There were a few CG's and inner cloud lightning, but it was not very intense. As we headed toward the updraft region, we encountered heavy rain at 6:50. We were just west of Elmira. There was no warning issued yet, and we kept listening to the scanner. We then remembered that it takes about 15 minutes for the weather bulletins to get to the weather radio from the internet. So we assumed that the warning was issued or at least going to be. Sure enough, the warning came on the weather radio at 7:00. This was the first warning issued for the day. It continued to rain heavily, so we pulled onto the road's shoulder. I took some more videos of the deluge. After a few minutes, the sky started to lighten up and the rain became lighter at around 7:15. By then, the storm seemed to already have moved out of the area, so we decided to head back and check the radar. This was one of my shortest chases, and we traveled about 40 km. We arrived home at 7:40. Finally... finally Mother Nature was kind to me.

Total hours: 1 hour 10 minutes

Distance: approx. 40 km