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June 29, 2003 Storm Chase

Dave Szozda and I left my house at 4:40 pm to target the Arthur area. CAPE in this region was around 2500 J/kg, with a Lifted Index of -7.

While we were on hwy. 12, just outside of Arthur, I noticed a beautiful rainbow that was hovering very close to the ground. I've never seen rainbows this low before. There were towering cumulus clouds throughout the sky. At 5:20, we noticed a weak shelf cloud, with some low scud ahead of us. We stopped and took some video and pictures. The storms seem to be somewhat high based looking. Forty minutes later, we were back in Arthur, driving on hwy. 109. We decided to "punch" this storm, realizing that all we were going to see was just heavy rain and a bit of cloud-to-ground lightning. The storm overall was not very severe.

At around 6:20, we were back on hwy. 12. We encountered some more heavy rain. The sun peaked through and created a brief rainbow. I looked ahead of us, and noticed another smaller cell to the south west. By 6:32, we encountered this cell. There was not much going on with this storm... we saw a bit of rain and some CG's. A few minutes later, Dave decided to pull onto a dirt road, so we could watch the lightning for a bit. There was not going on with the cells we had intercepted, so I was not really impressed. Indeed, it was a very frustrating chase season thus far.

By 6:50, we decided to call our chase quits, and head back to my place. However, on our way back, 10 minutes later, we spotted a not-bad looking shelf cloud racing eastward towards Waterloo. We pulled off hwy. 86, and decided to video and take pictures. There was a bit of rain where we were. We decided to head back into Waterloo, continuosly watching the shelf cloud. We pulled into a parking lot at the local plaza, and tuned into the KSR net, on the scanner. Ron Gravelle, a good friend of ours, made note about the shelf cloud. Dave decided to give Ron a call on the cell phone, but unfortunately it was busy on Ron's end.

We got back to my place at 7:30. This chase was probably one of my better ones of the season because I managed to get a couple of nice pictures from this chase.

Total hours: 2 hours 50 minutes

Distance: 161 km