June 29, 2003
Storm Chase
Dave
Szozda and I left my house at 4:40 pm to target the Arthur area. CAPE
in this region was around 2500 J/kg, with a Lifted Index of -7.
While we were on
hwy. 12, just outside of Arthur, I noticed a beautiful rainbow that
was hovering very close to the ground. I've never seen rainbows this
low before. There were towering cumulus clouds throughout the sky. At
5:20, we noticed a weak shelf cloud, with some low scud ahead of us.
We stopped and took some video and pictures. The storms seem to be somewhat
high based looking. Forty minutes later, we were back in Arthur, driving
on hwy. 109. We decided to "punch" this storm, realizing that
all we were going to see was just heavy rain and a bit of cloud-to-ground
lightning. The storm overall was not very severe.
At around 6:20,
we were back on hwy. 12. We encountered some more heavy rain. The sun
peaked through and created a brief rainbow. I looked ahead of us, and
noticed another smaller cell to the south west. By 6:32, we encountered
this cell. There was not much going on with this storm... we saw a bit
of rain and some CG's. A few minutes later, Dave decided to pull onto
a dirt road, so we could watch the lightning for a bit. There was not
going on with the cells we had intercepted, so I was not really impressed.
Indeed, it was a very frustrating chase season thus far.
By 6:50, we decided
to call our chase quits, and head back to my place. However, on our
way back, 10 minutes later, we spotted a not-bad looking shelf cloud
racing eastward towards Waterloo. We pulled off hwy. 86, and decided
to video and take pictures. There was a bit of rain where we were. We
decided to head back into Waterloo, continuosly watching the shelf cloud.
We pulled into a parking lot at the local plaza, and tuned into the
KSR net, on the scanner. Ron Gravelle, a good friend of ours, made note
about the shelf cloud. Dave decided to give Ron a call on the cell phone,
but unfortunately it was busy on Ron's end.
We got back to my
place at 7:30. This chase was probably one of my better ones of the
season because I managed to get a couple of nice pictures from this
chase.
Total hours: 2 hours
50 minutes
Distance: 161 km
