September 9,
2001 Storm Chase
My
uncle, Dave Szozda and I left on our first September storm chase at
2:00 pm. Our target was the Ipperwash area, in the SW, along Lake Huron.
Ten minutes later, we noticed some small TCU starting to fire up. Our
plans were to take highway 7/8 to Stratford, and then take highway 8 from
there towards Exeter, which would then lead us to our target. This was
going to be a long ride. We reached Stratford at 3:20. We noticed a
storm ahead of us. Was this it? It looked pretty good, but we were unsure
of what it would produce. Then, we noticed the Exeter Doppler radar
station at 3:30. Hmm, this seemed interesting, so we decided to stop
and take some pictures. After our Doppler radar sight-seeing, we decided
to put our focus more on the storms. We continued to head southwest.
Once we reached the town of Hunsall, we headed west on highway 84. By
now, the severe thunderstorm watch was upgraded to include the Huron,
Perth and London area.
As 4:10 rolled by,
we arrived at Bayfield. Yuck. The storm we were after didn't look so
healthy after all! After 20 minutes went by after deciding what do,
our chase plans had changed. Since we were in a small town and I had
to go, I took a quick stop to the bathroom and we were off on the road
again, heading south towards Ipperwash. The storm we were originally
following was not the one we wanted because it had amounted to practically
nothing. We took highway 21. Finally, warnings were issued for southern
Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair. These warnings were in effect until 5:45.
Well shucks, that was not much time! We had to get there quick before
it all ends.
At 4:30, we pulled
over off the road to take check the weather. Southwesterly winds were
gusting, as the as the sky became overcast. The storm's anvil moved
in overhead. It also felt very muggy. We reached Grand Bend at 4:48
pm, still on highway 21. I looked up at the sky and noted to Uncle Dave
that were were mammatus clouds. Then, straight ahead... a shelf cloud
loomed in front of a black, stormy sky. Wow, this was cool. We finally
pulled onto Ipperwash beach. I looked up ahead, and wow! A round-looking
lowering appeared right in front of us, which looked fairly close. It
hung there, twisted, and fingers seemed to be hanging down. Wall cloud!
Yikes, we were close to a possibly rotating wall cloud! This is something
you do not want to do, as it might drop a tornado at any moment. Then,
the heavy rain arrived, and the lowering had dissappeared. Intense lightning
darted out of the sky. Finally, the rain lit up and dust from the beach
started to blow. As the squall line started to move out, we left Ipperwash
beach at 5:38.
On our way home,
we kept re-gaining on the storm. We watched and watched as the shelf
cloud changed and evolved. At one point, we pulled off the road and
took some video because the shelf cloud had some nice banding features
in it. All of a sudden, we started to heard a roar... it was the heavy
rain! It was neat how we could hear it hit the ground before it got
to us. Big drops started falling and I got inside the van before the
camera started to get too wet. Well it was time to go home and call
the chase quits. It was September afterall, so the days had gone shorter.
We got back at 7:20 pm. I really enjoyed our last chase of the year.
Total hours: 5 hours
20 minutes
Distance: 376 km
