June 14, 2004
Storm Chase
It
was another active day in southern Ontario. Numerous severe thunderstorm
warnings and tornado warnings were issued around the Perth-Waterloo-Wellington
areas. No tornadoes had been confirmed or witnessed, but there were
a few reports of funnel clouds around Elmira and a rotating wall cloud
in Guelph during the afternoon.
I decided to try
my hand at chasing these storms later in the evening, after my Uncle
Dave Szozda got off from work. A few supercells were training, one forming
right after the other in a line from Stratford towards Guelph. Cape
values reached 2500 J/kg with lifted index up to -8 around Huron and
Perth counties. The SPC day 1 outlook outlined a moderate risk for the
Great Lakes region. A squall line stretching from north Lake Huron all
the way to Ohio was moving into Ontario at around 70 km/h as well.
I gave Uncle Dave
a call a few times, but no answer... he finally called back around 4:30
and we decided to chase. We were initially going to head after the squall
line, because we would not meet up with the supercell just west of Waterloo
in time. I hung up the phone and checked radar again, and noticed the
supercell had dissipated. However, just before Uncle Dave got here to
pick me, I noticed another supercell forming to the west of Waterloo
and thought we would have our chance at that instead.
We left my house
at 5:50 pm, and took our usual route, hwy 85 north towards west of Elmira.
We noticed dark skies over the area, and then just before we turned
to continue on hwy 85 west shortly before 6:00, Uncle Dave exclaimed
"What's that?!". I quickly looked over to the west and noticed
a classic, beautifully structured wall cloud! I grabbed the video camera
and started filming. It had just incredible structure! The wall cloud
was visibly rotating, and we could see rotation striations in the updraft
of the storm, almost looking like a large barrel. It was classic! A
few CGs and heavy rain followed the wall cloud in behind.
I tried to
call CANWARN, but unfortunately got a busy signal. We turned onto Township
Road 23 and pulled over onto the side of the road, to take pictures
and video. I stayed in the van and continued taking video of the rotating
wall cloud. Low scud kept forming and rising real fast into the wall
cloud. I noticed a tail started forming, but it didn't amount to much.
I kept my eyes on the wall cloud. We decided to try calling CANWARN
again, and finally got through. At this point, I realized we were getting
too close to the wall cloud... it was headed straight for us!
Once Uncle
Dave hung up, we decided to head north as quick as we could. We were
in a dangerous position, so we turned around to head north on hwy 85
to try to get out of the way. Once we moved a bit, I got out of the
van and realized the wall cloud was still on top of us... but thankfully
it did not decide to drop a tornado and started to dissipate from the
outflow of the squall line right in behind. I took a bit of video of
some more low scud and a rain foot in the distance.
At 6:15, the wall
cloud was gone as soon as the torrential rain hit us. We pulled onto
the side of the road to wait it out, but eventually gave up on the chase
because there was not much else going on but heavy rain. We continued
to head back to Waterloo and noticed some roads were starting to collect
water from the heavy rain. We got back to my place at 6:40 pm. This
was a brief but great chase!
Note: Driving close
to rotating wall clouds can be very dangerous because a tornado could
develop any minute, so I do not recommend you do that on your chase.
We were just lucky no tornado dropped, or I would start calling myself
Dorothy! Always plan escape routes on your chases.
Total hours: 50
minutes
Distance: 40 km
