July 29, 2002
Storm Chase
My
goodness what a week! On July 28th, a tornado watch was issued for almost
all of Ontario (perhaps that was over done), and Waterloo had a tornado
warning, something we don't get very often. The storm didn't do very
much. The warning was issued pretty much when the sun started to come
out. I saw the storm off to my east, and saw very very slight rotation
within it, and very little striations. The rotation didn't last very
long. Pretty much after that, the cell started to dissipate. The tornado
warning was issued because radar detected rotation within the cell.
During the afternoon,
I continued to monitor the weather. There were some cells over Lake
Huron, tracking east. My uncle and partner, Dave Szozda, and I chatted
about the storms on the Internet. I noticed a not bad cell making its
way towards Huron county. Then it started to fall apart. However, once
it was more inland, it started to pick up strength and develop into
a supercell! Doh! I wanted to catch that storm, but Dave wanted to wait
around for the line to make its way through and hope for supercells
to develop. The supercell was around Arthur, and continued to track
east. It had a v-notch and some rotation detected on radar. The storm
then triggered tornado warnings to be issued, but they were a bit more
NE of Arthur. By now, catching up to that storm would have been tough.
So we hoped for more storms to develop ahead of the line. Some cells
would pop up, however they would dissipate. Hmmm, that didn't look too
good. I hoped those cells were doing the same thing that one supercell
did. I chatted with Tom Stefanic. He mentioned that the outflow from
the squall line was messing things up ahead of the line. Shortly after,
the line seemed to hold, so Dave came over and we headed out at 4:00
pm.
Our plan was to
head northwest and then cut west. That would give us room for us to
either head north or south depending on which storm was better to chase.
We took hwy 86, then headed northwest. At 4:30, we encountered a bit
of rain from a cell. There was not much going on. A bit of rain here
and there. The clouds didn't look too interesting. A few minutes later,
we decided to call Tom for a nowcast update. He mentioned that the squall
line was ahead of us and seemed to be intensifying. He said we should
catch up with it in about a half hour. So we decided to head southwest
on hwy 12 towards the town of Walton and wait. We encountered a bit
more showers. It seemed that weak cells kept popping up ahead of the
squall line. We waited for a bit and listened to the scanner. It turns
out there was a severe thunderstorm warning for southern Lake Huron.
That warning had just about ended, at 5:15. We figured the squall line
was starting to make its way inland, so we decided to head more southwest,
figuring that the squall line would strengthen. At 5:19, we heard about
a severe thunderstorm warning being issued for Waterloo and Wellington
counties. Doh! Talk about timing or what! We leave that area hoping
to see severe storms more west, and a warning is issued back home. Talk
about luck! At 5:25, we decided to call Ron Gravelle. He advised us
to head towards Mount Forest and Arthur because radar had detected rotation
with a cell over that area.
So we gave up on
the squall line and turned around. As we headed up hwy 12, to get towards
Arthur, I saw a roll cloud ahead of the squall line at 5:35. Then after
a few minutes, a tornado warning came over the scanner. It was issued
for Wellington and Dufferin counties! All right, finally some action!
Now it was a race to get to the Arthur area before it was too late.
Funnel clouds were being reported. I noticed some shear within a few
clouds, so it was obvious the one cell near Arthur had rotation in it.
After we got off of hwy 12, we pulled onto hwy 23, and then took hwy
9 to Arthur. We finally arrived in the area, but it didn't look like
much was going on. So at 6:20, we called Ron once again once we were
in Mount Forest. He said the cell didn't have rotation anymore. Dang.
We shouldn't have started heading southwest before because we had just
missed the action around Arthur. We decided to head south on hwy 6.
Heavy rain soon engulfed us, and the tornado warning ended at 6:41.
At 10 after 7, I
noticed a bit of "greenage" in the storm, on hwy 6 south of
Arthur. There was heavy rain in there, and we figured that was pretty
much the squall line. All we had was just rain and a bit of scud. Nothing
to get real excited about. So we decided to start heading home. After
almost getting lost in Elora at 7:17, we took hwy 18, and made it back
in Waterloo at 7:45. Our previous chase was much better.
Notes: Thanks for
the nowcast updates Ron and Tom!
Total hours: 3 hours
45 minutes
Distance: 153 km
