August 19, 2001
Storm Chase
Uncle
Dave, my sister Rita and myself left on our 6th storm chase of the season
at 3:05 pm. Our target was going to be in the SW, near the Sarnia/Lambton
area. This area was near the center of the low pressure system, which
was expected to bring a cold front and squall line thunderstorms. We
left Waterloo and took hiway 401. Usually, we would not normally take
this hiway, partially because it was known for many car accident occurrences.
The good thing was that today's traffic was pretty good out on the hiway.
We figured if we took the 401, we would be down in the target area right
on time for the action, and hopefully a bit earlier.
Today's CAPE was
not very high, but it was high enough to trigger some convective activity.
CAPES were somewhere around 1200 J/kg, while the helicity was at 100.
The helicity really did not favor any supercells, unfortunately. The
good thing was that the cap inversion was not holding strong... it was
rather weak, at .6 degrees. The low's center was located over southeast
Michigan. Storm cells were already firing up all over the area. The
severe thunderstorm watch was issued at 2:10 pm, and earlier, a severe
thunderstorm warning had been issued at 1:48. A tornado was also reported
near Paris.
At around dinner
time, we arrived in London. At this point, there was not really a whole
lot going on. TCU were starting to build, so we decided to wait things
out and go eat at Pizza Hut. About a half hour later at 5:30, we decided
to head back out. We turned on the scanner to listen for any warnings.
None. I looked up at the sky. The TCU were getting larger. This indicated
that the storm was not that far off. We pulled onto hiway 402, going
towards Sarnia. Finally, about 15 minutes later, we encountered the
storm. Very heavy rain had reduced visibility down to almost zero. Several
CG's and in-cloud lightning flashed around us. Finally, warnings came
on over the scanner. After the heavy rain was over, the stormy sky looked
rather ragged and rough looking. There was really not a whole lot to
this storm, except for its heavy rainfall which forced drivers to pull
over off to the side of the road and wait it out. We then decided to
head north to Perth and Huron counties, however we couldn't decide on
how to get north and stay in position with the storm. So, we drove back
and forth, back and forth on hiway 402... re-encountering the storm
again, again, and again. Boy, some chasers we are! :-) We listened to
the scanner, listening for any more warnings. None. Well, I guess this
was it. When we reached Strathroy, we finally headed north on hiway
81 and then took hiway 7/8 from Parkhill. We re-met up with the storm
again. Hey, the "Storm Descender" could use another car wash
:-) There was not much else going on, so we decided to head back home.
We arrived at 8:15 pm.
I ran upstairs and
went onto the Internet to check out which warnings had been issued and
what the squall line was currently doing. I checked my email and read
the previous warnings that had been issued. Then, I came across a tornado
warning. Oh dang it! This warning was issued for the area we were near
around the time we were eating at Pizza Hut!!! It turns out a waterspout
had been reported off of Kettle Point. Shucks. Why didn't we get the
warning over the scanner? We received Sarnia's forecasts, and Kettle
Point is not far from it either. Strange. Well, we did learn from this
chase... always tune into different weather radio frequencies to pick
up other warnings that may be issued and that you do not know of, and
not to rely on just one. This could possibly save your life and even
help you more during your storm chases.
Total hours: 5 hours
10 minutes
Distance: 375 km
