July 4, 2003
Storm Chase
That
afternoon, I was watching the radar on the Internet. There were a few
lines of severe thunderstorms heading straight eastward in southwestern
Ontario. A severe thunderstorm watch was in effect for that area. Dave
Szozda and I decided to give this one a go, and head south. We left
my place at 3:30 pm. Our target was the London area, because CAPE in
this region was ranging from 3500 to 4500 J/kg, with a Lifted Index
ranging from -8 to -9. We took hwy. 401 towards London. We encountered
a cell on the way, with some rain.
An hour later from
our departure, we ended up on hwy. 19, just north of Ostrander. We saw
some flooded, and very saturated fields. It was clear that the bow echo
had already been through this area. Further down the road, we witnessed
some more evidence from the storm. It was evident that the storm had
brought high winds to this stretch. There were branches and leaves all
over the road. We stopped in Tillsonburg to get some gas. We didn't
know what to do at this point... we were pretty sure we were too late...
the storm had already gone through. We tried to call Ron Gravelle, but
couldn't get through. We listed to the KSR net on the scanner. Someone
had mentioned that London had high winds, and caused some tree damage.
After that, we decided to take a little tour of the wind damage. At
one house, a very large branch was broken at the base of the tree, and
layed across the lawn. A whole bunch of leaves and smaller branches
were scattered about. It looked like bow echo/straight line winds had
done the damage, and were blowing in one direction - east. We took a
bunch of photos and video of the damage.
A few minutes later,
we tuned into the KSR net, on the scanner. Someone on the air had mentioned
that the next line of storms had split... the cells over Ontario fell
apart, while most of the action remained south, over Lake Erie. We decided
to stop by in Port Burwell, just to check it out because we had never
been here before. By now, we were getting hungry. By 7:10, we realized
we had busted on this chase, so we went back to check out the damage
once more. We saw a whole small tree on the other side of the road,
along with other branches blown across into the field. We went into
Tillsonburg to grab a bite to eat, and decided to head back home.
On our way back
up, we noticed a nice looking cumulonimbus to our north. A severe thunderstorm
watch was still in effect, so we decided to see if we could catch up
to that storm. Around 8 o'clock, we realized that this storm was just
north of Waterloo, so we took hwy. 86 northwards. Unfortunately, as
we got closer, it didn't look like much anymore. Ugly clouds were overhead,
and there was no action going on. Because it was getting late in the
day, we decided to give up on that storm. On our way back home, we spotted
some distant TCU and took some photos.
After that, we got back to my
place at 8:50. Although I was disapointed that we missed most of the
action, we did get to see some tree damage, which added interest to
our chase.
Total hours: 5 hours
20 minutes
Distance: 300 km
