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May 21, 2001 Storm Chase

Is the year 2001 a chase odyssey or a bust odyssey? I guess that's a good question when taking into account that in early April, southern Ontario was quite active. Nocturnal severe storms produced golf ball-sized hail in several areas, including Wellington county, on 7 April. Then things have gotten quite. Southern Ontario would see the odd risk here and there, however those storms moving in from Michigan would die out as soon as they reach the border! I wonder if it has to do with customs... :-) :-(

Well anyways, that had largely to do with the omega blocking pattern that has been hanging over southern Ontario for quite some time now. Finally, on 21 May, active weather once again entered the region. At 2:34 pm, the first severe thunderstorm watch was issued for Windsor-Essex-Chatham-Kent. OK, not a bad start, since the risk of severe weather could expand to include more areas. All afternoon I tracked the storms on WeatherTap. Then, an hour later, at 3:24 pm, things where really starting to heat up. A tornado watch was issued for Elgin, Sarnia-Lambton, London-Middlesex-Oxford, and Huron-Perth! I haven't seen one of those since 1998! I returned to WeatherTap's radar, and saw the storms over Michigan, however, there was one catch... these storms were moving north! The tornado watch almost made no sense to me because the storms were over MI and moving north. However, there were some more storms on the way, coming from northern Ohio. I gave my uncle, Dave Szozda a call to let him know of the situation that was setting up. We discussed our possible chase, but we were unsure of what was to happen. The storms over the Windsor area looked good, but they were moving north as well, which meant that they would miss Perth county, our chasing target. And the more north those storms headed, the more they dissipated. Great, great, great. Using WeatherTap's radar, I tracked the storms that were crossing Lake Erie from Ohio. The ones near Cleveland looked pretty severe, but the test was to see if they would hold together as they crossed the lake. Sure enough, they started to lose their punch, like I had figured. Don't storms like Ontario anymore?! Well, my "luck" had changed again, when the storms regained their strength as they hit land. Dave Patrick's target was in the London-Windsor area. Being the "desperate" chaser that I was, I wanted to target Perth county, because it was closer to home and had a tornado watch at the same time. I just wanted to chase! Plus, CAPES were the highest in the counties nearest Lake Huron.

Dave Szozda, Rod Sinclair and myself chatted about the situation via MSN Messenger. As the storms continued to travel north into SW Ontario, things started to take shape, or at least we thought. Every time the radar reloaded, the storms seemed to have gained intensity as they continued their journey north. Finally, Dave and I made up our decision. We were heading out.

I gathered my chase gear, and the three of us, Dave, Rita and myself, left at 7:10 pm. Like the usual, we took highway 85 and 86, going up by Elmira. I looked around the sky... nothing but overcast. Oh wow, this is just wonderful. Another overcast sky to make this chase difficult. Believe me, storms are hard to find in these conditions. It was also raining lightly. We arrived at Listowel at 7:45 pm, and pulled onto highway 23, heading SW. We were now in the tornado watch area, but we could still see nothing that would suggest a tornado was possible. By now, it made no sense to issue a tornado watch. Just slightly after 8:00 pm, we pulled onto the side of the road and waited around for a little while longer. The winds were blowing from the ESE, but there were no signs of inflow. I got outside of the van, and felt the strong cool wind blow over the open country. OK, so where is this storm? Clouds were moving quickly due to the strong winds, yet there were no signs of the storm. I could tell we were not in the flow region. And the tornado watch was still in effect, according to the WeatherRadio. Then it started to rain again. No thunder, no lightning. Nothing but cool wind and rain. This almost seemed more like an autumn rain than a spring rain. Dave turned on the scanner again to listen to the WeatherRadio at 8:30. Now, the tornado watch ended. Rita said, "That is all we need to know." Enough said. I had a feeling there wouldn't be much with these storms anyway, but at least it was good to get out of the house and take our chances. We never even turned on the cam once.

We turned back and headed home. We got home at 9:15 pm. I checked my email and found out the tornado watch had expired at around 7:30! I find it rather strange that the WeatherRadio said it was in affect at 8. I check WeatherTap once more, and saw that the storms had weakened and were moving east. Figures! On 22 May, I got word from Dave Sills that there was an unconfirmed report of a brief tornado near Harrow, in southern Essex county, at 6:30. Some trees were damaged. We were busted in Perth.

Total hours: 2 hours 5 minutes

Distance: 155 km