Monthly Archives: April 2015
Aurora Borealis – March 17th 2015
On March 15th a large CME (coronal mass ejection) was blasted towards earth from the sun. It arrived as a G4 storm (very intense) just in time for St. Patricks Day!
Twitter was buzzing with people posting photos of the display on the dark side of the planet and the GOES satellite showed no diminishing in the storms intensity. I started following the solar storm at 11AM and as soon as day turned to dusk some 10 hours later, I grabbed my gear and raced north towards Schomberg.
I began snapping photos as the faint aurora began to grow brighter and moved southward from the northern horizon.
I decided to try a different location and shot further north and west placing Schomberg on my northeastern horizon. If I did not have work in the morning and time to spare I would have driven to Georgian Bay.
The northern lights danced and twinkled on the horizon with varying intensity often clearly visible to naked eye unaffected by the nearby light pollution.
At around 10:15PM local time the northern lights peaked in intensity with some red tones showing up. It was a great display, easily the best I've seen in the last 5 or 7 years!
The biggest problem for me during this event was the wind! It was howling outside with gusts reaching 65 km/h! It was not overly cold, just a couple degree above the freezing mark but the wind chill was biting. I had brought all my lenses including the telephotos but they were rendered useless with the wind. Even on a sturdy tripod the long shutter times and amplified vibration would ruin any photo. So I was limited to 70mm and below. I literally tried to take all my photos in the momentary and sporadic lulls between gusts.
The display kept going with no sign of slowing down by KP numbers began to drop suggesting the end of the show was near.
Finally the show began to fade and I had to play with my ISO and exposure length to keep up with the declining light.
But before the show ended I did use my fisheye to grab a few super wide 180 degree shots!
Powerlines, darn powerlines! They seem to always get in the way, whether it's storms or the aurora, they just sneak in somehow! The lights quickly faded into the darkness after this photo and the show was over.
April 2nd 2015 – BUST
On April 6, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
This was one of the first potential "thunderstorm" days of the year. I would not even call it a chase day, it was more like a "there might be thunder" type day.
The NAM several days in advance had been showing a somewhat interesting forecast for the coming Thursday.
The only somewhat interesting facet was the potential for strong winds at the surface if any convection did blow up and was able to kick some of the strong 900mb winds down to the surface.
As the date drew closer the weather models began to lose their appeal. The storms on the model output were losing their punch and it was looking worse and worse.
The morning of the "forecast storms" I decided to quickly draw out a surface map by hand just to get back into the swing of things. It looks interesting but not great. I think there was a little bit of desperation just to get out and not have it snow.
I headed southwest from Toronto towards London and stopped just outside the city. I took a couple photos of the warm front coming in aloft with my Fisheye lens on my Rebel T4i.
After a quick surface analysis I decided to hangout near Southwold. There was quick access to the 401 and it was a good position to head north or south if storms did fire. However at this point things were not looking good, rain had filled in much of the warm sector and surface temperatures were cooler than forecast.
This was the radar around 18Z showing plenty of rain where it should have otherwise been fairly clear. Even though the HRRR model was trying to clear out the rain, the reality was very different from the forecast.
This was the sounding for Sarnia and boy it's crappy looking. There's thermal warming in the lowest layer from subsidence, no instability present and it all suggests just crappy rain despite the presence of that one 52 knot wind barb around 250M AGL.
As the time went by and the surface cold front began to catch the low level jet stream, some interesting clouds and roll dynamics formed. There was plenty of convergence and mechanical forcing in the atmosphere but the stability was too great.
While this "funnel looking" cloud was interesting, it was just a laminar cloud, sort of like a roll cloud that was being pushed along the by strong winds just above the cool surface.
Here's another shot of the boundary that produced that faux funnel as it passed to my east. You can clearly see it's all horizontal motion.
This was the final nail in the coffin as a chase day. The 20Z HRRR was showing no instability or mechanical forcing that would result in convection before the passage of the surface cold front which was now occluding I might add.
It was a solid bust of a chase day, but that's okay! I did manage to test out some gear and I had a nice drive in the country.