May 31, 1998
Storm Chase
On
May 30th, in the afternoon, I had heard that there would be some very
active weather moving into southern Ontario in the morning the next
day. A cold front was going to move across Lake Huron, bringing severe
thunderstorms with it. This same storm had brought severe weather in
the Midwest during the afternoon. At 10:30 p.m., Environment Canada
had issued a severe thunderstorm watch for southern Ontario. They had
said that the storm could hit in the morning, with a chance of a tornadoes,
but they had also said that they might hit over night. I had a strong
feeling that they would issue a tornado watch in the morning. On May
31st, I woke up at 7:00 am. I looked out the window to see if it had
rained over night. I laid in bed, having a "sick" feeling
in my gut. I was afraid that I had missed the action. Fortunately, it
was still dry outside. I listened to my walkman radio to check the weather
forecast. A radio station had said that the severe thunderstorm watch
had been upgraded to a tornado watch. Excitement soon filled the air.
I quickly jumped out of bed and got dressed in a time period of about
five minutes. Funny... I never get dressed that fast on school days.
The current weather conditions at 7:00 am were as follows: temp: 20
degrees Celsius, humidity: 86%, dew point: 16 degrees, wind: S 15 km/h,
visibility: 4.8 km, and barometer: 100.12 kPa. I called my chase partner
and uncle, Dave Szozda, to see if he felt like going storm chasing.
At 8:30 am, the storm hit. The wind was very strong, and the rain came
down heavy. There were occasional CG’s.
Shortly after 9:00, uncle
Dave came over. Rita and I got into the new minivan, and we headed out
on the road. We encountered heavy rain and gusty wind as we headed towards
Elmira. There was some lightning, but it wasn’t really intense.
I had concluded that this storm had developed into that of a squall
line, which is a continuous line of intense thunderstorms that usually
bring heavy rain, gusty winds, and travel rather quickly. I did not
fussy this kind of storm because squall lines usually don’t bring
much. However, we did see some mamma clouds, and I had spotted a possible
small funnel cloud. It looked smooth and pointy, and grew got a bit
long. As it pointed towards the ground, it dissipated. When we reached
the small community of Conestogo, we seen numerous tree damage due to
the high winds. I saw a large whole tree branch laying on the ground.
It turned that this squall line was a bit more intense than the last
one that I had chased on March 28. Damage was reported throughout southern
Ontario. Power lines were down, and some whole branches fell onto homes.
Around 10:30, the storm cleared and we headed back home. Later during
that day, I had heard that there was an unconfirmed report of a tornado
near Holland Marsh, north of Toronto. We didn't get much video or pix
out of this one.
