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July 29, 2002 Storm Chase

My goodness what a week! On July 28th, a tornado watch was issued for almost all of Ontario (perhaps that was over done), and Waterloo had a tornado warning, something we don't get very often. The storm didn't do very much. The warning was issued pretty much when the sun started to come out. I saw the storm off to my east, and saw very very slight rotation within it, and very little striations. The rotation didn't last very long. Pretty much after that, the cell started to dissipate. The tornado warning was issued because radar detected rotation within the cell.

During the afternoon, I continued to monitor the weather. There were some cells over Lake Huron, tracking east. My uncle and partner, Dave Szozda, and I chatted about the storms on the Internet. I noticed a not bad cell making its way towards Huron county. Then it started to fall apart. However, once it was more inland, it started to pick up strength and develop into a supercell! Doh! I wanted to catch that storm, but Dave wanted to wait around for the line to make its way through and hope for supercells to develop. The supercell was around Arthur, and continued to track east. It had a v-notch and some rotation detected on radar. The storm then triggered tornado warnings to be issued, but they were a bit more NE of Arthur. By now, catching up to that storm would have been tough. So we hoped for more storms to develop ahead of the line. Some cells would pop up, however they would dissipate. Hmmm, that didn't look too good. I hoped those cells were doing the same thing that one supercell did. I chatted with Tom Stefanic. He mentioned that the outflow from the squall line was messing things up ahead of the line. Shortly after, the line seemed to hold, so Dave came over and we headed out at 4:00 pm.

Our plan was to head northwest and then cut west. That would give us room for us to either head north or south depending on which storm was better to chase. We took hwy 86, then headed northwest. At 4:30, we encountered a bit of rain from a cell. There was not much going on. A bit of rain here and there. The clouds didn't look too interesting. A few minutes later, we decided to call Tom for a nowcast update. He mentioned that the squall line was ahead of us and seemed to be intensifying. He said we should catch up with it in about a half hour. So we decided to head southwest on hwy 12 towards the town of Walton and wait. We encountered a bit more showers. It seemed that weak cells kept popping up ahead of the squall line. We waited for a bit and listened to the scanner. It turns out there was a severe thunderstorm warning for southern Lake Huron. That warning had just about ended, at 5:15. We figured the squall line was starting to make its way inland, so we decided to head more southwest, figuring that the squall line would strengthen. At 5:19, we heard about a severe thunderstorm warning being issued for Waterloo and Wellington counties. Doh! Talk about timing or what! We leave that area hoping to see severe storms more west, and a warning is issued back home. Talk about luck! At 5:25, we decided to call Ron Gravelle. He advised us to head towards Mount Forest and Arthur because radar had detected rotation with a cell over that area.

So we gave up on the squall line and turned around. As we headed up hwy 12, to get towards Arthur, I saw a roll cloud ahead of the squall line at 5:35. Then after a few minutes, a tornado warning came over the scanner. It was issued for Wellington and Dufferin counties! All right, finally some action! Now it was a race to get to the Arthur area before it was too late. Funnel clouds were being reported. I noticed some shear within a few clouds, so it was obvious the one cell near Arthur had rotation in it. After we got off of hwy 12, we pulled onto hwy 23, and then took hwy 9 to Arthur. We finally arrived in the area, but it didn't look like much was going on. So at 6:20, we called Ron once again once we were in Mount Forest. He said the cell didn't have rotation anymore. Dang. We shouldn't have started heading southwest before because we had just missed the action around Arthur. We decided to head south on hwy 6. Heavy rain soon engulfed us, and the tornado warning ended at 6:41.

At 10 after 7, I noticed a bit of "greenage" in the storm, on hwy 6 south of Arthur. There was heavy rain in there, and we figured that was pretty much the squall line. All we had was just rain and a bit of scud. Nothing to get real excited about. So we decided to start heading home. After almost getting lost in Elora at 7:17, we took hwy 18, and made it back in Waterloo at 7:45. Our previous chase was much better.

Notes: Thanks for the nowcast updates Ron and Tom!

Total hours: 3 hours 45 minutes

Distance: 153 km