As I was about to call it a day the storm near Startford had a quick core collapse

Gusty winds and small bits of hail were forced out of the core and everything just collapsed

As I headed home I took this shot of the storm near Stratford just before it began to fade off the radar

This wide shot gives an idea of perspective with regards to the size and scope of the flooding.

Persistent local rains in excess of 50mm created localized flash flooding. These vehicles in Concord (Vaughan) became flood victims.

Illuminated by the not too distant city lights, a massive shelf cloud comes into view as it bares down on Milton

The shelf/roll cloud slowly getting closer

As the MCS moved towards Milton around 1:50AM a shelf cloud & roll cloud developed

The 8AM surface map paiting the setup for the day. The MCS visible over WI/MI would later be the trigger point for the convection

The meso NAM bufkit data looked alright, there was plenty of energy to be had and while support was no great there was enough instability to kick off some good storms

The real-time MESO analysis RAP soundings around the time storms started to fire up

This was the first storm of the day, it formed in a triple point convergence zone between lake breeze boundaries and an outflow wave from the MCS which was now crossing Georgian Bay

Here's the storm a little later on in life

Just after this photo Mark Robinson and I bailed and left the Innisfil storm to go chase storm which were forming to our immediate west

A shelf cloud on the leading edge of the MCS outflow near Beeton, ON

Here is the shelf cloud approaching

This is pretty self explanatory. It was neat to see dust and other small debris blowing, winds were kicking up into the mid 50's with maybe an isolated gust as high as 60.

Tower going up on the western flank of what remained of the outflow in Vaughan

Like all chases, the morning surface analysis was critical and I always check sfc obs before model data so I don't skew or bias my analysis.

Here's the core literally falling out of the storm over Milverton looking west from Poole

Near stationary storm near Poole, Ontario

This is a hand analysis I made using the operational 00Z NAM forecast for the afternoon of May 3rd.

A quick 15 minute rough analysis I threw together just before 11AM. The red box was the area I figured was best for storms and proved to be bang on. So I'm pretty happy it all worked out!

The CU field just prior to storm initiation in Alma, ON.

Storm begin rocketing up. This is looking north towards Arthur from Wellington Rd 12 north of Parker.

The first storm I intercepted. This storm produced a good scattering of 1/2 - 1 cm sized hail but went on to produce hail up to 2 cm in diameter just to my east.

This is one of the melting larger hail stones the first storm went on to produce.

This storm was the tail-end charlie at the time. It quickly matured to my west and virtually trained over my head. I had to edge out of the core as the hail stones began to get loud & had me worried about vehicle body damage. You can see in the above image good inflow/outflow mixing at the rear of the storm. There was subtle rotation with good warm inflow to be had.

These were the hail stones that dinged my car and forced me to back away from the core. Pretty hard stuff! Jen (the girlfriend) had some nice nail polish on. I submitted this photo to Environment Canada shortly after I took it for verification. The Environment Canada met (Arnold) commented that it was a nice nail polish LOL.

Here is the storm cell continuing to mature as it edges eastward just north of Arthur. There was excellent low level inflow and a brief wall-cloud area within the broader rotation formed but dissipated quickly. You can see a huge bulb of cold outflow driven scud directly above the road to the north of the storm (left). Substantial local flooding was occurring as some places received a months worth of rain in a matter of minutes.

Now the storm was at the strongest it would get. Wonderful structure with a 70 dBz core on radar and weak rotation in the base radial products.