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July 22, 2002 Storm Chase

A severe thunderstorm watch was issued at 10:51 am for southern Ontario. It finally seemed like the chase season was starting to pick up. The first round of severe weather came in the early afternoon. However, my partner, Dave Szozda, was at work, so there was no way I could get out. So I just watched the storm from my front porch. I hoped that there would be a second round of storms later on. The rain came down heavy. Later on, Dave called. He asked if I knew anything about an F3 tornado in Conestogo. I was like, what?! Something didn't seem right. Apparently there was gossip going around at his work. We did have a lot of wind, but it was more of an outflow/straight line type of wind. He mentioned that they got hit pretty hard at work, with the heavy rain and high wind. I pondered about this. Perhaps it was a microburst or straight line winds. When my parents go home from work, my mom mentioned to me that she thought she saw a wall cloud. Now, whether it was one is questionable. But I smiled. My dad exclaimed to me "You missed an F3 tornado in Conestogo!". I then went on to explain that there was a lot of outflow/striaght line wind, and that there was no way a tornado could have been rated that fast. A tornado of that strength would have triggered some tornado warnings anyway.

Anyways, the weather cleared up for the remainder of the afternoon. I continued to monitor radar and satellite. I began tracking a developing line of thunderstorms over Lake Huron. Shortly after dinner, we decided to chase. The line of thunderstorms were a bit more inland from the lake, and seemed to hold together. I noticed a cell that popped up ahead of the line just to the north of Waterloo. Dave came over and we left at 6:55.

Our target was going to be around Perth county. So we headed up our usual way, north on hwy 86 and cut west. That small cell that popped up ahead of the line was actually looking interesting. It was a nice looking cell! At 7:00, we started to video the small storm, which was just off to the west. As we got closer, I noticed that it seemed to have nice structure to it. I noticed a few inflow bands, a flanking line, and banding ahead of a shelf cloud, with heavy rain in behind. We decided to hang around this storm for a while. It almost appeared to show some supercell structure. As we watched the storm, a few staccato CGs flashed ahead of the shelf cloud. We let the shelf cloud overtake us, and then it started to rain. We got back in the van. We started driving a little more west. The rain got heavier. By this time, we figured that was pretty much it with this storm, so we decided to catch the line of storms in Huron county. We stayed on hwy 86 and headed northwest. When we were on the back of the smaller storm, I noticed how crisp the anvil seemed to have got. I also noticed a flanking line. For some reason, I almost didn't feel like leaving that storm.

We went through Listowel at 7:45, then noticed a dark sky to our west-northwest. It didn't look like much at first. It seemed to lack structure in the clouds. But as we encountered the storm, heavy rain and lightning started to surround us. We noticed a bit of banding as well. Then our visibility deteriorated. It got very dark out. The type of darkness that you would see after the sun has just set. This started to bring me back memories of our May 12, 2000 chase. We pulled over to wait it out. Afer a few minutes of getting our van "washed", it started to get brighter out. The sun started to cast orange hues. We then noticed that the sun was starting to peak through the rain and clouds. This was obviously the end of the storm. At 8:12, we decided to turn around. We re-encountered the heavy rain once again. We decided to let the heavy rain get ahead of us a bit, so we pulled over. A few minutes later, I started noticing that some CGs were purple looking! Perhaps they were really blue, and the orangey sky made them appear purple. We then saw a rainbow. This line of storms didn't seem to be that bad afterall. We then decided to start heading home.

At 8:50, Dave decided to attempt at taking pictures of the lightning with his digital camera. It was tough. Some of the lightning was incloud and overhead. Then, he took a picture and noticed a bright streak come off the van. That almost looked like a leader! He then took more pictures. However, that same bright streak kept showing up! We then finally realized that the headlights from the cars passing by were relfecting in the side mirror. Doh! Oh well, at least it's nice knowing that we were not almost hit by lightning! :-)

On the way home, we met up with another storm just north of Waterloo. We got back at 9:30. Not a bad chase! The only thing that confused me was that no warnings for the storms we were on had been issued. Perhaps I should have called CANWARN and told them about the heavy rain. Shucks. Severe or not severe, we still had a good time.

Total hours: 2 hours 35 minutes

Distance: 131 km