Posts in Category: 2015 Storm Chases
September 9th 2015
On October 21, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
Not a storm chase per say. While on vacation in Florida this tropical thunderstorm about 70km away lit up the horizon with awesome lightning!
October 17th 2015
On October 21, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
October is notorious in Southern Ontario for wild swings in weather and the third weekend of October proved to be one of those wild rides. Just a week earlier I was celebrating Thanksgiving in a t-shirt and shorts with temperatures of 24C but that warm spell was crushed as cold polar air moved in the following Thursday, and even colder air flooded in Friday evening setting the stage for strong snow squalls Saturday morning.
By 8PM Friday a well organized lake effect rain squall was pushing inland from Georgian Bay and I figured that I would prepare myself for what would likely be an interesting Saturday morning.
Just an hour earlier snow squall watches were replaced with warnings. Some forecast models such as the WRF-NAM, HRRR and HRDPS were plopping almost a foot of snow in the highlands between Blue Mountain and Feversham. I figured the amounts were high since typically, most October snow melts on contact with the warm ground and air temperatures usually don't hang below freezing for any length of time. Plus, the lakes are still very warm and really moderate any cold air masses.
I got up relatively early Saturday morning and headed out the door around 9:30AM. There was a large sustained squall exactly as forecast. I really had no idea how much snow was falling since webcams in this area are sparse and squalls can be very local. Needless to say a cold sunny morning turned into a cloudy snowy morning near Honeywood.
I stopped in Honeywood to grab a few photos. This was the first significant snow I encountered and accumulations ranged from 1cm to about 5cm locally. The roads were mainly bare and wet with the odd slushy section. Nothing my rear wheel drive car with summer tires couldn't handle.
I really lucked out, mother nature timed the snow squalls almost perfectly to coincide with the peak of the fall colours. The trees looked beautiful and the white blank landscape was very strange.
This was the first really colourful wood lot in the snowy landscape that I happened to come across. I made sure to get a series of photos. I was worried the weight of the snow and wind the previous day would have stripped the leaves farther to my northwest and did not want to forgo any potential photos along the way.
I slowly drove up the road looking for some interesting subject matter when the sun suddenly popped out. I literally jerked the car onto the shoulder and was already stepping out before I had fully stopped. These windows of sunlight don't last long, you're literally dealing with a few seconds if that!
The only thing that would have been cooler would have been a blue sky!
I slowly drove deeper into the squall and eventually ran into treacherous roads near Singhampton! Cars were in the ditch, visibility was a couple hundred meters, there was hard paked ice and the temperature was zero! Yikes, way worse than what I had expected! My tire tracks revel the depth of the snow here, you can see it's a good 5-7cm deep.
The heavy snow under the squall reduced visibility so much that anything more than 20 or 30 meters away became washed out. It was not a good spot for photos, but I did find this cool building with an old horse and buggy car in Rob Roy.
This was the scene just a few hundred meters down the road from the horse and buggy house. Looking at these pine trees it sure felt like December!
Believe it or not there was a solid 10-12cm of snow covering everything! That's a heck of a lot of snow for October, especially given how wet it was
At this point I paused for thought. While the snow was cool, it was simply obscuring visibility far too much. The colour in the landscape was lost and believe me, I'll have months to photograph snow. I decided to push west to get to the edge of squall where the snow would stop.
After looking at the radar and visible satellite I decided to head southwest. It was my best bet for clearing and even some blue sky. This photo was taken in Ice River Springs at 10th Concession and Highway 2. You can see the sun was poking through the squall.
Just as I was about to escape the squall another wave of snow closed in darkening the sky and coating the landscape. So I did all I could and kept heading west.
Suddenly the sun came out again just west of Feversham near Lady Bank. While navigating through the squall I was also looking at Google Maps satellite images to find forested areas. Flat farm land is good for storm chasing but not very good for fall foliage.
Presto! What I was looking for finally happened, the squall cleared and sun came out. It was very surreal to have blue sky, convective cumulus, snow flakes and fall foliage. The temperature also jumped up to what felt like 7 degrees.
I quickly snapped photos where I could before the squall closed in again. I realized the snow on the trees was melting quickly so it was indeed warmer and very surreal.
I finally found the colour contrast I was looking for.
June 27th 2015
On June 29, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
This was a very unusual weather patter for late June. Basically, a low pressure system amplified by a neutral trof developed over southern Illinois and quickly deepened when an MCS formed with the center of the low and fed back energy. The low pressure system then quickly tracked north-east from Indiana and occluded as it reach Southern Ontario. Despite the occlusion occuring, there was enormous low level wind energy and weak instability which allowed the system to continually fill with rain and weak embedded storms all in addition to remnant moisture from the pre-existing MCS.
Despite this being a synoptic system that really just made for a miserable and cool weekend, I somehow decided that it would be a good idea to head down to the Lake Ontario shoreline. It was actually very tropical storm like with constant winds and rain bands battering the shore and his actually created some interesting weather.
The winds were pretty strong from the get go and they were poised to peak around 9PM. I headed down early around 6PM, and the force steadily increased with each gust feeling a little stronger than the last.
This ill placed park bench was quickly becoming a victim of the storm with waves lapping it and the small stones and shale gradually swallowing it up. Often people will drag benches right to the waters edge, so who knows how long this bench was sitting
The cloud ceiling was low at 400ft AGL, it was cool watching the cloud zip past the tops of the condo buildings with such a strong low level wind flow.
The trees in the foreground really give you an idea of how hard the wind was blowing, it was keeping everything in full motion and even kicking up spray from the lake.
I chose to venture out to the shoreline with my 70-200mm lens because it is weather proof and had the push and pull I wanted for a variety of shots. Stormy weather along the shore always looks better tighter than wider.
This was cool, the waves on the lake are rarely ever as big as fair weather ocean waves but today that was the case! It was neat to watch them roll along the rocks.
A stormy day would not be complete without some shots of birds hovering in the strong winds!
The beauty of the 400mm lens is that even in crappy weather, the lens hood really protects the lens from rain drops and speckling. Plus, it's great for super tight shots!
Crash! Check out the stick being thrown into the air.
This wave literally exploded on the rocks.
Usually the lakes don't really have waves that curl and break, instead they just break with small white caps and not much structure. The wind direction today was however prefect for curling waves.
The waves which were slowly getting bigger also grew in depth as the wind pushed and walled up more and more water at the western end of the lake. The waves were also becoming dirtier as they pulled apart the shoreline.
Yes, an almost perfect curl.
The waves were becoming more vicious and the bench was really getting drowned in the rough surf!
Here are the waves curling and crashing ashore with more energy than they had before.
The strong gusty winds were also starting to tear small branches from the trees. I left around 7:30PM so I can only imagine the damage became much worse around night fall.
This was my favorite photo from the entire adventure, it was the best wave explosion that I photographed during this excursion.
I used my new Vaavud anemometer with my iPhone to guage the wind. Gusts were getting into the mid 50s and it was sustained below that into the 30s and 40s. While it was October like it was still warmer than than it usually is in October!
Here's a shot of the radar, it looked like this all day! Rain bands just whipping around in the increasing winds. Really tropical storm like!
June 25th 2015
On June 26, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
So this was a weird day! The models had hinted at some week storms the day or two prior. I thought to myself that I would keep today in mind for a local chase. It was looking rather blah as a cold front sinking south pushed up against a very weak warm front.
There were some weak storms that started to fire as early as 12 noon but they looked really poor. Then around 1PM a more dominant cell seemed to fire near Grand Valley and track east-southeast. I headed off to intercept it once I was convinced it was going to hold together for a few scans.
I was really not paying a ton of attention to the velocity data but boy I sure should have been! There was a nice couplet visible!!
The storm near Caledon East came into view once I was just south of Bolton. I was shocked to see a large, ground hugging wall cloud with slow but very visible rotation!
The wall cloud was almost textbook in nature, the only problem was rain from another storm impending on the western most side of it.
This is a better shot of the rain on the western flank from a secondary cell. You can also see the beginning of an outflow driven shelf cloud.
This was the sounding at the time which makes it very clear what the atmosphere was doing. The biggest problem was the nominal convective energy. The storm was working with very little CAPE, barely anything at 400 j/kg!
It was really nice to be able to just stay in one spot and watch the storm slowly creep over. These things are usually cranking in Southern Ontario and moving at 30 - 40 knots. This was a very plains like 10 - 15 knots.
There was plenty of low scud getting drawn in and lofted upwards but I never did see anything really tighten up and threaten to drop a funnel.
I wish the contrast was better! By this point rain from the neighbouring storm was starting to come down steadily and I knew it was a matter of time before this storm ran out of inflow.
This shot looking due west shows the neighbouring storm starting to really darken and now the outflow shelf / gust front is really visible.
The corn gave a really cool twisted effect.
This was my last photo before the wall cloud became buried in rain and the parent storm died. Not bad for only having to drive 10 minutes from home.
After re-positing south I snapped this quick photo of the gust front over Brampton before heading south into Toronto and calling it a day.
Here is a sequence from the King City radar showing the path of the velocity couplet from just south of Orangeville to Bolton.
Here are a couple GIF loops showing the storm and the associated velocity couplet. You’ll also find a time-lapse video at the bottom showing the supercell mesocyclone and associated wall cloud in motion with clear rotation.
June 8th 2015
On June 11, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
This was one of those somewhat unusual setups where storms were poised to fire along a trough from a secondary low behind a weak cold front. The initial cold front brought weak storms and drenching rains overnight and into the morning.
The day started with dense cloud cover and dreary showers. Despite the washed out morning conditions, clearing and warm air advection began to ejected energy from Michigan northeast into western portions of Southwestern Ontario. The lingering cloud cover also began to clear from west to east. The environmental conditions quickly began to become favorable for storms and some weak convection initiated in Michigan.
A few storms began to form over central Michigan and track towards the border. I decided that it looked decent enough to head out and traveled west towards Exeter.
I took a few minutes to stop and visit the Exeter Radar Site since it was literally along the way into town.
Just west of the radar site the skies began to clear and the extent of the deep rich low level moisture became apparent and thick super low level cumulus started to form. You can see how wet the ground is from the storms the previous day and the early morning rainfall.
I stopped in Exeter, grabbed some A&W for lunch then headed north. While I could hear thunder an incredible amount of haze had fomented itself around me. Just north of my local two discrete cells popped up as the nose of warm air from Michigan began to break through the cooler air from the morning.
This was the first storm to my west. I could see very little structure due to the haze and cloud. I sat and watched before I eventually decided to travel south.
The storm soon appeared to look more organized and I could see core structure as well as outflow features.
This pile of scud looked like a wall cloud briefly but it was most likely an outflow only feature.
As the storm drew nearer it has a pretty solid looking core and a ton of outflow wind. Unfortunately I could not see any solid inflow structure to the southwest which sort of worried me.
I stayed right on the edge of the storm but it was just chugging along at a good clip and dumping tons of rain and outflow crap in its wake. I eventually met up with fellow chasers Scott Burlovich and David Piano and we regrouped to head west towards another storm.
As we headed towards another storm this was a neat shot looking back at the first cell. You can see the core of the storm to the immediate top of the photo (north) and the whales mouth to the right (east). This entire whales mouth feature was a massive outflow boundary that was slowly pushing south away from the parent storm.
As we got closer to the second storm which we had targeted it began to fall behind the outflow boundary from the first storm. As this happened it was apparent that there was little structure and likely no surface inflow. This was a half hearted attempted at a shelf cloud.
Eventually we fell south and a new weaker cell began to form ahead of the outflow washed storm. In littler three radar scans it jumped from a weak rainy storm to something more impressive little. As we punched through the storm and wound up on the northwestern flak we had a good clear view of a nice flanking line and good inflow structure.
This storm had now managed to meet up with that big outflow boundary and started to pull in warmer air south of the cold pool at the surface.
I took the opportunity to grab a photo of Scott while he photographed the storm.
We fell south with the storm and I quickly noticed some crazy spin in the cloud directly ahead of us. We both stopped and started taking photos and video. I can't explain it with still photos, but the rotation was very pronounced.
This was the inflow/outflow part of the storm where had there been a tornado, it would have been located.
Again, the outflow began to get ahead of the parent storm and trigger a cool whales mouth. By this time the visible rotation had diminished.
This was the area where new towers were growing but not precipitating. These clouds were super low!
Eventually everything just became a big pool of outflow and fresh storms failed to really successfully fire while whatever was on radar quickly fell apart. Getting out south ahead of the outflow the air was 26C and it was hazy and humid.
I noticed on radar a new storm had started to brew to our northwest but visually we could not see much of anything. I suggested to Scott we head in its direction and once we were about 4 km out we stopped and had this interesting view!
The storm was unusually laminar looking with mid level inflow present. It's unusual to see this type of structure in Southern Ontario so I was very enthused!
I had to grab the Fisheye lens, this storm had such a cool look to it! Despite being very laminar it had no rotation that I could see, at least not on a ground relative level but mid-level inflow banding was very very present.
This wall of cloud which almost had a roll cloud look was just to the southwest of the main storms core region.
Interesting to note is that the storm had this beaver tail like feature. Again, this storm was hauling in mid level and low level inflow so it makes perfect sense to see moisture just streaming in from the southeast.
The edge of the storms core was just coming across the trees in distance. I figured this was a cool photo and I only had about 30 second after taking it before the rain hit.
Eventually Scott and I fell back southeast and punched through the storms core. It was very underwhelming but it was fun to watch Scott try and fight with the rain to photograph some crepuscular rays breaking through the rain.
I waited for a bit and watched some lightning trickle out of the storm with Scott. It was nothing that would be easy to photograph so I called it a night and headed home parting ways with Scott.
April 30th 2015
On June 1, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
This was the real start of my chase-cation. There was a very marginal potential for severe storms and tornadoes were a virtual impossibility based on probabilities. It was a usual weird as could be high plains setup where by some miracle of the storm relative wind fields and near non existent moisture, the high plains would somehow produce storms which would grow in strength by evening and eventually everything would be pushed out by a cold front sinking south from Wyoming. Weird things happen above 1500 meters in elevation!
After spending the night in Denver we headed north towards Fort Lupton. Both parts of Wyoming and northeast Colorado looked great for storms. Near for Lupton I had to stop and take a photo of this mountain with a nice grass-hopper jack in the foreground.
After hanging out near Fort Lupton for a while I headed east to follow and watch one storm cell that was just fluff near Dearfield. The thing with these storms that roll off the mountains is that you never know exactly which one will become "the storm". Eitherway, it was still early and the mix of high based and low topped convection was not good!
By this point I decided to head north on I-25. These storms just west of Ft. Collins looked like they were trying to organize but still low topped and high based.
The radar was showing something interesting starting to come together in Wyoming with the storm tracking SSE at around 20 knots while the stuff in Colorado still looked mushy. The thing with chasing on the edge of the front range is that often the storms go up super dry and the radar can be very deceiving. Your eyes are the best tool since you'll often still be able to see more than whatever the radar can see.
On the way to Cheyenne there's a super flat wide open part of I-25 that's always windy where the elevation jumps to 1900 meters! On the way to this particular storm I was being buffeted like crazy, it was hard to stay in my lane!
Once in Cheyenne, the storm began to quickly look more and more organized as it moved into a deeper more moisture rich boundary layer.
The inflow base had that nice chiseled look where each little stub of cloud was condensing right at the lifting condensation level.
I quickly blasted south and east to get around Cheyenne and put myself back ahead of the storm. At this elevation to see a storm registering with reflecitivities so high means that hail is guaranteed. I think the largest stones at this time were around 1 inch.
After popping out from under the storm I was shocked to see it had transformed into a beautiful classic supercell. The storm was super low precipitation, I think dew points were like 40F and cape was only on the order of 1000 j/kg but there was enough directional shear relative to the storm motion to produce this supercell.
Considering conditions were marginal at best I don't think this is all that bad!
I stayed with the storm which was super easy given the 80 MPH speed limits. Unfortunately another storm had developed about 100 miles south in Colorado and outflow from that storm was quickly headed north.
The outflow from the stuff in Colorado killed my nice Wyoming supercell and I headed towards the Colorado storms.
The storm complex which look good on radar became a real mess by the time I got where I needed to be. The high terrain this far west is a blessing and a curse. It helps storms form without needing any of the usual 850mb parameters but at the same time dries out the atmosphere and limits moisture. In this case, as the storm complex moved east the atmosphere became deeper as the elevation dropped but the moisture did not increase with depth and the storm fell apart.
As the storms grew and died in a strange twist they generated their own local moisture fields and began to re-saturate the atmosphere.
Eventually another more organized storm complex formed and started to take root. Strangely enough the inflow was situated on the north side, but given the odd wind fields its no surprise.
This storm which began to exhibit some weak rotation was actually a -counter-clockwise rotating storm but had clockwise reversal of the features. Weird, I know!
Eventually everything became outflow dominated and the storm fell apart.
Near Logan Colorado the fields and road were coated with a covering of hail stones ranging from pea sized to nickle.
Lot's of hail.
The hail drifts at the side of the road were half a foot deep in places after rain had washed the hail aside.
This years chase vehicle! The top antenna is a cellular amp, K40 on the left is for the CB, middle antenna is a Diamond CR-8900 quad band (10, 6. 2 & 70) while the right antenna is a 5/8th 2m whip.
May 11th 2015
On June 1, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
On this day a messy warm front which was severely stunted by the cold water of the great lakes struggled to make it into Southern Ontario. Shear profiles supported a linear squall line at best along a trof line and energy was very weak with peak cape around 800 j/kg.
So there was plenty over hyped optimism about today's potential storms. Heck, even the SPC had a 5% chance of a tornado!
Despite all the optimism, I was more pessimistic. I had been in downtown Toronto most of the day and it was dreary! I was watching my home weather station and it was a sunny 28C, meanwhile 22km to the south it was 12C and cloudy. The problem was lake moderation from the frigid waters of Lake Erie and Ontario.
This map from Wunderground shows exactly what was going on. You can see the single digit temperature air near the Lake Ontario shoreline, the location of the now stationary warm front and the super warm air to the west.
I was really concerned that nothing of any substance would make it east of Hamilton, but everything west of Woodstock looked like it was washed out by rain. I gambled that the trof pushing east would do something in the small pocket of warm air south of Cambridge and a squall line began to form.
Because moisture was abundant and there was lots of potential for scud and stuff due to pockets of lake moderate air mixing in here and there I thought that maybe a shelf would be possible. Unfortunately this part of the Niagara Escarpment is a terrible area to find clearing! The blossoms on the trees however did look beautiful!
I found one area with a little bit of clearing but was not satisfied it would be good enough.
I eventually found a hill in St. George and parched myself atop it. Then slowly a shelf formed as the squall line drew closer. BINGO! Success!
The shelf began to really begin looking pretty. There were these neat striations all throughout the clouds upper deck.
On radar the growing squall line was quickly intensifying.
By now the shelf cloud was really coming together and looking cool!
While not severe, it sure had a cool mean look to it!
I'm trying to get the St. George watertower in with the squall line.
By now the squall line was almost above my head and closing in quickly. My very brief chase would be coming to an end soon!
Not sure what to make of those turbulent waves near the top right? Cool though.
This was how things were progressing on radar with the strongest part of the line now bearing down on me.
I decided to break out my Fish-eye lens and grab some cool 180 degree images.
This was my last photo. The winds were now picking up and drops of rain were falling but you'd never know with just how wide the fish-eye lens is. Fun little chase for early May in Southern Ontario.
May 30th 2015
On May 30, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
The models two days prior had already indicated that today was going to be a long chase day with a slow moving cold front and pre-frontal trough sparking off convection as it crept into a warm southwesterly wind field. By 11AM storms had already started to quickly form and by midday the action was in full swing.
So I had to fix my computer. Long story short, it was in the shop for a week, I needed a new motherboard and the part finally came in from Montreal. Perfect! I raced up to Canada Computers to drop the board off for installation before the storms started.
That was the plan anyway, I was barely out the door when cells started to go up to my immediate west and the chase was sort of on.
The storms. still a distance away were part of a surface wave that was tracking east from Lake Huron. I was watching this feature on the visible satellite image and ironically it began to balloon into something while I was trying to do the whole run to the computer store thing.
As I headed northwest to intercept the first cluster of storms for the day some low hanging structure came into view.
I pulled into an empty school which gave me a good clear view of the sky. This feature was both an outflow and partial inflow feature. If it was curving the other way it would be a bonafide wall cloud.
The storm on radar was beginning to look a little more intense than it had before and a stronger core was growing.
When you see these types of scuddy things right on the edge of a strong storm core usually it means a notch of some sort is forming and it also means there's a lot of pushing and pulling between air trying to get out of the storm and air being forced into the storm.
You can see where the storms forward flank meets with the main updraft and to the far left of the screen your also seeing a little bit of the rear flank with outflow scud.
I quickly raced into a better "I'm getting cored" position and shot some video. Photos just don't do strong cores justice, you need video! I clocked winds of 96 km/h briefly.
Here's the core as seen through the GoPro.
This was taken just as I was about to cored, you can see how there a bit of a notch like thing on the BREF. Basically it's warm air curling around and trying to feed into the storm. The SREF numbers were low, almost zero, but still a typical notch like echo for Southern Ontario.
I kept with the storm for a little while but it was moving into an increasingly urban area and already outflow was undercutting the warm southwesterly surface flow. Basically, any other storm in this area would have likely been elevated.
I decided to head west and intercept storms as they went up along the frontal / outflow boundary. It was the best option since I could pick and choose storms easily and most of them were growing in fresh unstable boundary layer conditions not yet having been contaminated by outflow cooled air. Just as I was gassing up one storm unloaded its core and I was just soaked while hiding behind the gas pump attempting to fill up my car!
I'll ignore the gas station cell, while wet, it was on the "cool" side of the boundary. This storm near Campbellville tried for a little while to get organized but eventually just blew out as it cut itself off from the warmer air.
Just as the first storm appeared to be dying a second cell on that storms outflow went up on the warm side of the boundary and merged into this blob like thing on radar.
This was a little puzzling... this deck of scud was under the updraft, exhibited some upward motion but was pretty lame otherwise.
It looks like there is a shelf trying to form which indicates outflow yet there is evidence that the scud is also being drawn in from the storm rain cooled core?
This area had scud rising very rapidly. It was quickly condensing and becoming attached to the cloud base but there was zero rotation.
I eventually found myself underneath whatever this cloud structure was. It was very low and moving against the storms outflow. This only became apparent once directly underneath.
I was finally able to get southwest of the storm and it began to look more like an inflow structure or a very simple want to wall-cloud look alike thing.
This storm still puzzles me, I don't want to call this a wall cloud but it was clear that the storm was ingesting its own moisture as you can see scud feeding into this structure from left to right. This storm eventually move into terrible terrain and I headed west.
This was going to be storm number three in the line. It was a stronger cell that was just on the edge of the cold outflow boundary and looked okay on radar. Fellow chaser Ryan Dobbie was not too far away in Embro and we hooked up.
The Embro storm which was now just north of Woodstock had some amazing low level inflow that was going straight in and the scud was just going right up. Unfortunately, it began to go linear and again outflow started to undercut the inflow.
This area for a little while had me interested but it eventually fell apart.
Here you can see how the storm core started to re-develop just to our northeast and the storm has now become really linear.
Despite the outflow undercutting the storm at the surface, aloft, maybe 300 meters or more above the ground there was fast moving inflow. Enough to keep the storm alive but not enough to keep it surface based.
Ryan and I headed back south to intercept the nose of a bowing squall segment which had migrated all the way from central Michigan. Unfortunately this feature was propagating through the prior storms outflow which diminished its intensity.
A little notch like feature (with no base velocity) formed just to our northwest and raced up to catch it.
You can see how the storm looks at the surface relative to the radar.
The tip of the bow so to speak was that piece just crossing the road in the distance and the notch (if you want to call it that) is just to the left in the rainy area.
After intercepting the squall line which was storm 4 we headed south in the hopes that something else could get going in the warm air. A little storm did try to go up but I suppose the stable marine layer from Lake Erie was just not favorable.
I was surprised to see this beast of a chase vehicle. It is pretty slick!
Ryan posing for the camera with his dodge and the "canwarn spotter" lettering. It was a fun day and it was nice to meet Ryan and his brother out in the field (haven't seem for a few months).
May 18th 2015
On May 25, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
Today was the first “real” Southern Ontario chase that presented any possibility of actual thunderstorms. Having gotten back from tornado alley I was not storm deprived but I was not expecting much either. After chasing down in the alley, Southern Ontario can be pretty boring. I usually don’t feel the storm vibe here until late June or early July when SDS (storm deficite syndrome) begisn to set in again.
The play was going to be along a cold front swooping in from Michigan. There were indications that there could have been some storms earlier in the day around 18Z/2PM along a pre-frontal trough however mid level subsidence crushed everything. I spent a few hours at the Cambridge Onroute service centre. Things inititally looked somewhat promising but then the cu field quickly began to show signs it was just turning into pancake cloud. Pancake cumulus is a term often used by pilots to describe cumulus that hit an inversion and stop growing vertically but instead flatten out and turn into stratus, from the air they look like pancakes apparently.
Again, the only area of pre-frontal convergence was right between the lake breeze boundaries just west of Hamilton and you can see how the clouds are flattening out and not growing any taller. They were all hitting this nasty 600mb inversion and it was just halting their development.
After hanging out in Camebridge for what felt like too long I decided to head west towards Stratford. There we're some storms cells popping up in Michigan and slowly heading towards Lake Huron. I figured I may as well get into some sort of half decent position should anything survive the trip across the lake.
This was the sky outside of Dublin. I took this photo using my fisheye lens which captured around 180 degrees of the horizon. You can really see how the there was a spur of cu and tcu growth in the area. As the front approached lapse rates began to pick up but the problem was there was stabilization from the marine layer being pushed on land by the southwesterly surface flow.
Another similar shot showing both low level and mid levels clouds indicating instability in both levels of the atmosphere.
Just as I was twiddling my thumbs I saw a dust devil spin up in the field beside me and I gave chase. Of course it was a fruitless chase since I eventually lost soft of the dust devil but it did cross the road in front me which was cool.
A few moments after my dust devil chase John Scheer caught up with me. He's another local chaser who lives in the Stratford area and decided to swing by and say hello.
After hanging out and chatting for a while John and I headed towards Bayfield to intercept one cell that seemed to be surviving the trip across Lake Huron.
The storm near Bayfield started to look okay. It was not severe or anything but the sun was creating some nice backlighting.
Unlike may of the other great lakes, the problem with Lake Huron is that often there are huge drop-offs down to the waters edge. There are only a few places along the more southern shores of the lake that are a straight to shot to the waters edge. This was one of those drop-offs where we were forced to shoot from above without actually being able to head out to the waters edge.
Once the storm began to make its way inland, both John and I headed back east to keep ahead of it. The setting sun really made the storm look beautiful. It tried to produce a shelf cloud of sorts on end but it never really materialized. Some other chasers on the northern edge of the cell (Laura and Scott) really got a beautiful shelf cloud!
Again, another shot of the storm. The light made the contrast pretty intense.
It was nice to see the sun through the rain curtains of the storm. Again, nothing severe here, just a pretty sky.
I was running out of time and daylight. I needed to be for 4AM the following morning and decided to give up on the storm early. There was some lightning but I did not feel it was worth my hanging around since I had a good two hour drive ahead of me. It was a fun little chase.
May 3rd 2015
On May 24, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
Today was the first real chase day that showed some potential for severe storms. A thermal trof was swinging in from the west and coupling itself with a cold front descending from North Dakota into Eastern Nebraska. The best lapse rates were right on the nose of warm air where there was a southeasterly wind field. The biggest problem at the time was a lack of good 500mb support but otherwise bulk shear numbers were set to rise as the day progressed.
HPC surface analysis 21Z May 3rd 2015
We started by making our way west. After pulling off the interstate near Wood River NE, the road looped around this freshly plowed field and I saw that it was kicking up dust devils. We were just entering the area where the lapse rates were starting to really get steep just along the thermal trof. In fact the winds were actually pretty gusty right in this area and there was some good veering in the low levels.
It was almost like this area where dust devils were being kicked off one after another was sending me a signal.
Needless to say, I love dust devils and had to stop to grab some photos. It's so cool to see them one after another.
I tried to get a shot showing a little more depth and height to the dust devil but it was not easy with the poor contrast between the sky and soil making the vortex visible.
We stopped for gas in Duncan, NE along route 30. I saw that this area had some good cu growth on the visible satellite and it was sitting a long a triple point boundary.
Within about 40 minutes of stopping one of the towers had gone from just that and turned into a CB.
I headed a few miles west out of town and stopped in an area of good clearing to watch the storm develop and grow. It was still very early in the day but it sure looked like a good storm.
I stayed with this particular cell and it grew and morphed with other clouds in the area. It began to exhibit some problems though, namely that the lack of 500mb support was allowing rain to fall through the developing updraft.
There another storm on radar about 50 miles to our south near Lincoln Nebraska that went up quickly and began to exhibit a strong signature on radar.
It look like it was a good storm because it was sitting in a strong area of southerly inflow and secondly it developed along and rode an old outflow boundary from an earlier MCS that rolled through around 10AM CDT.
Jen made the cell to go south to this storm and we did. Jen took this photo as we blasted along the interstate and were just about 30 miles from the storm.
There were some spotters on a local skywarn net giving reports. The storm at this point in time had a pretty nasty core on radar but not much else in the way of structure, lowerings or rotation. The reports that we were hearing indicated golf ball sized hail was falling and getting pretty deep in some places.
On the way to the storm we briefly passed through and stopped in the town of Hickman. The area had suffered some pretty substantial damage from hail shredding the trees and there were golf ball sized stones all over the place.
A little farther down the road east of Hickman we started to run into some of the hail drifts that were being reported on the skywarn net. The temperature also dropped from 90F to a cool 50F thanks to all the ice on the ground.
Here's a bit more of a zoomed in shot showing the amount of hail covering the road.
I snapped this shot of my chase vehicle. You can see way off in the distance the first cell we were chasing.
This was the storms flanking line. Despite looking rather unimpressive the dry air and the steep lapse rates were more than enough to produce all the hail.
It's not too often you see a rainbow that results from hail stones falling but that's exactly what this was. You'll also notice white dots in the field to the right of the frame, those are golf ball sized hail stones.
You can see how the storm had a supercell look on radar despite not having that type of a look from the ground. The purple is where those big hailstones were lurking.
Again, these big golf ball sized hail stones were just laying there.
I decided I was going to take a few close passes along the storms core. The storm was moving slowly, gently drifting towards the southeast and the road network was favourable. If things began to get a little hairy I could also go in the opposite direction and avoid any potential vehicle damage. It was apparent that the hail was really doing some tree shredding.
This was the first close pass I did. You can really see how green it was once you got up under it.
Towards the center left you can see into the storms green core. This area was becoming a vaulted region which meant it was mainly rain free but really big hail was potentially present.
I tried to make a couple passes under the storm and get to the south side but there were hail stones ranging from dollar to golf ball in size getting spit out regularly. In this video grab you can see a few bouncing on the road towards my car.
Eventually I had to sort of go around the storm. I eventually wound up in an area of both inbound and outbound winds. It was really unusual since the wind would randomly blow in different directions. As I started to make my way back towards the storm this little eddy / gustnado spun up and crossed the road.
To my surprise it was loaded with all sort of debris ranging from mud and small stones to twigs and wood chips. It was actually pretty violent and turned the car a wonderful shade of brown!
After our encounter with the gustnado / outflow eddy we stopped to get a better view of whatever the lowering was we had seen before. By the time I got out of the car it was gone but there was clearly a wall cloud trying to form, although a high based one.
You can see our location at time relative to the storm and what might be the edge of the forward flank outflow.
Here's a zoomed in shot of the wall cloud. The storm was now moving into much better bulk shear and you can see how this structure is looking much smoother.
Unfortunately the storm was still pretty high based and older convection to the west was now finally starting to organize!
The new supercell to the west had a bell like look near the setting sun. That's always a good sign since it means a pretty storm is brewing!
I got Jen to show me the iPad with the storm in the background. I figured it was cool to see everything in one shot!
We are the red dot near Sterling.
I eventually gave up on the storm I had been with most of the day since it remained elevated and had no solid lowering. We headed west and this was the second approaching supercell which had some beautiful structure!
This was a reported funnel cloud which prompted a tornado warning. The hill creates the optical illusion that it's on the ground but spotters on the other side confirmed it was just a funnel cloud.
Even without a tornado I love to just see beautiful storm structure!
We were right in the edge of the tornado warning and fortunately the storm was low enough in precipitation that we had a good clean view of all the structure.
This was a tough shot! There was still too much daylight for longer exposure lightning shots so I had to use a 1 second rapid-fire setting to catch this.
I dropped a little south of the storm to avoid getting bonked by the three inch sized hailstones this storm was spitting out!
As dusk turned into night I moved west and setup for lightning shots.
This storm kept going for a very long time but failed to ever produce a confirmed tornado despite the persistent and visible wall cloud to the center-right of the screen.
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.
March 1st 2015 – Record Cold February
On March 1, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
I’m not a climatologist and I was not around in the late the 70’s but according to the record books, this past February was certainly something record breaking to live through and challenged the February’s of 1977 through 1979.
December was relatively warm, at least compared with last year! The mean temperature was a balmy 0.0C with the coldest temperature of -10.3C having been recorded on the 2nd and the warmest high of 10.1C on the 24th. By January more polar air was making it’s way south and the mean temperature plummeted to -7.3C with the first sub -20C low being reported on the 13th when the mercury dipped to -21.4C at 7:34AM.
Getting into February, the first half of the month was cold with overnight lows regularly dipping into the -15C to -18C range but by the 12th things were really beginning to tank. Blocking from the west (see image above) allowed wave after wave of arctic high pressure, and I’m talking deep arctic air to dive south through Manitoba and into Ontario and Eastern Canada where we just simply froze.
Pictured above is the 850MB temperature departure from normal on Feb 15th which was and so far remains the coldest overall day of the current winter and past winters going back to at least 2007. Not only was it just freezing, but this was the first time I’ve actually recorded a windchill in the minus 40’s. If your wondering, the windchill hit a whopping -41.7C / -43.1F at 8:06AM as the mercury dipped to -25.7C with a wind speed of 40.2 km/h pushing the scales to a new unseen low since my record keeping began back in 2010.
Wind chills and perceived temperatures aside, the actual 2 meter temperature departure from normal was not only on the order of some 15 degrees Celsius but the extent of the cold air was impressive with the Bahamas, Florida and Cuba getting a taste of the winter. Did I mention that much of the eastern half of North America was also freezing?
In the above graph, I’ve merged the February’s of 2012 through 2015 to show how progressively each February has actually become colder. In 2012 the mean temperature was -0.5C and by 2015 it has now dipped to -12.2C with a significant portion of that departure occurring in the second half of the month. Also interesting to note is that the entire month has been below freezing without a single day allowing for any thawing.
Actually the last above freezing day was January 24th which means it has been below freezing at my home in Vaughan for 35 consecutive days. This has also had the net effect of helping to lower the frost line progressively closer to the to the 60cm / 2ft mark which would be disastrous for many peoples water lines. The Great Lakes have also been feeling the brunt of the cold with ice cover reaching record levels and shipping grinding to a stand still.
The biggest question now is what will March hold? From the looks of the CFS and other climate models, the trend of cooling for the given forecast period looks to continue and spring may be much further than we would like to think!
But in the meantime (get it? mean time?) I’ve included a map here from the CFS V2 summarizing February 2015 which has been below normal for the majority of North America and all of Greenland. The monthly climate summaries for February 2012 through 2015 are also located below.
January 7th 2015 – Arctic Blast
On January 11, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
Another crop of the same steam devil.
The winds were howling from the north at 40 - 50 km/h. Despite the lake starting out warm, the heat transfer to the air was immense and the water was cooling and icing up quickly. Even so, the water needed to only be a tenth of a degree above freezing to continue steaming. Typically a temperature differential of 18C or greater is all that is required to generate steam fog.
The strong winds which were around 60-70 km/h at 80-120 meters were bending the taller steam devils as they reached up into the sky. The bending of the vortex meant there was additional venting which may have been helping to sustain some of the larger vortices while disrupting the smaller weaker ones.
Again, another crop of the same image.
As the sun began to sink towards the horizon and ever colder air from the north continued to migrate south temperatures began to drop towards -21C.
Achieving these aerial images was risky and very challenging because I was operating at the wind limit for my UAV and the battery capacity was reduced due to the falling temperatures. Being over and near the lake compounded the risk that any potential failure would spell a watery end for my UAV.
I just don't understand how birds can take this brutal cold!
This was the most difficult image of the day. Temperatures were cold and there was a large expanse of water between myself and my UAV. The wind was also off shore and attempting to carry my UAV out over the lake.
I really had to rush this photo!
Here's the same lateral post from land. It was frigging cold!
Here's a near shot showing the open waters along the north shore. The northerly winds were taking any ice out into the open lake. I'm sure somewhere on the New York side of the lake the ice must have been piling up!
I've lost all the feeling in my body at this point.
Here’s a brief video showing the steam devils in action!
The video is from 2015 but I still have 2014 on my mind so ignore that error! There’s also no audio because some nearby hunters kept firing off their .22 and missing the Geese they were trying to hit. So it was a little annoying.