August 15, 2000
Storm Chase
The
day was going to hold something interesting for the storm chaser, at
least according to the forecast. However, making my nowcast for the
evening was somewhat difficult. I spent the weekend at my aunt's place,
who happens to have no Internet access at all, so all I had to rely
on was The Weather Network. By the afternoon, a severe thunderstorm
watch was issued for SW Ontario, however a capping inversion was in
place. I made several phone calls to Dave Szozda, my uncle and partner,
to see if anything was updated. Nothing. The sun continued to shine,
and the atmosphere failed to show signs of convection. By the time dinner
rolled around, I was starting to get my doubts of anything forming.
This cap was holding strong, and only puny small cumuli floated above
our heads. However, at 6:30 PM, an "explosion" in the sky
occured. Is there going to be a chase? TCU started to move in from the
west and before I knew it, they were all over the place. The cap finally
broke! Dave and I talked on the phone once more and made our plans to
chase. We figured that once the cap broke, storms would fire up. He
noticed something developing around the London area on weatherTAP's
radar. While waiting for Dave to come over to pick me and my sister,
Rita, up, a TCU floated overhead and produced a heavy rainfall. Yes,
I got wet, but I was starting to feel happy that the atmosphere was
about to do something.
We left at 6:50
and stopped for some gas. We then made our decisions to take highway
401 down to the London area because Dave heard that other chasers were
making that their target area. The cells Dave saw on radar were expected
to intensify. As we continued to drive down 401, we waited for a warning
to be issued. Nothing. We looked back over to where Kitchener was and
saw the TCU that brought the rain... it looked pretty dark and more
interesting than the other clouds around. Rats. And we were leaving
it. I hoped that no warning would be issued for that cell because we
were a fair distance from Kitchener. Along our way to the London area,
we some hidden TCU due to the haze. And these TCU didn't look too great
either. About an hour and a half later, we arrived at London. Now we
were disappointed. All that driving to see nothing but distant TCU off
in the haze. Just great. Gas was not cheap either. Just great, great,
great. We waited around for a little while longer, but then decided
to call it quits. It was starting to get late and we realized that this
chase was going to be a bust. We spent another hour and a half driving
back home. We arrived back at 9:30 PM and drove a total estimated distance
of 250 km. Ouch.
Later that night,
thunderstorms went through Kitchener-Waterloo and other areas of SW
Ontario. A severe thunderstorm warning was issued for another county
west of K-W. I spent that late evening watching lightning at my aunt's...
thinking to myself that a capping inversion will either mean boom or
bust.
Total hours: 3 hours
20 minutes
Distance: 250 km
