By 7:30AM it was already 18 degrees with a humidity of 94% making it feel like 20C with the humidex. Tower cumulus were already bubbling up in places as conditions only got hotter with the sun beating down.

Convection started going up early, two waves were forecast to move in from Michigan by both the Regional GEM and later the HRRR. Morning visible satellite images and even the radar data agreed well with the forecast showing both these waves very well in the visible satellite imagery. Also visible was a pre existing stationary boundary that was literally running right along highway 9 and eventually meeting with the Lake Ontario breeze. This boundary was in place since at least May 19th when weak storms fired off the leading edge and it was not washed out by the squall line May 20th since during the early morning hours of the 21st nocturnal convection fired along this same boundary. So by 12PM I was on the road and heading west towards Arthur to intercept the rapidly developing storms.

I rolled some video around Grand Valley. The sky was getting dark and it was hot out, damn hot! The air was super sticky and muggy, there was a fairly strong southerly flow and the day had that Oklahoma feel to it, the feeling you get just as your waiting for a supercell to come into view. Of course, this was no supercell and the skies looked ominous but it was not like I was expecting anything crazy, which is very different from Oklahoma! I guess, the anticipation is really the feeling I'm describing.

As I was just going to punch through the first storms, things were getting a little messy, there was a lot of convection going up ahead of the main storm cell I was interested in. My gut told me to stop driving and wait, but the radar was screaming at me to keep going west so I listened to the radar.

So yeah, it started to pour, not overly hard and there was no wind or anything so the rain was more of a visibility hindrance I found then anything to worry about.

Just as I was outside of Arthur I saw a green flow directly in front of my and then a wall of scud quickly rising as it was being pushed up by outflow. I was not nearing one of the first stronger cells in the cluster ahead of the main storm. When I drove into it, the rain hit like a wall! There was some wind in the 50km/h range but it looked more severe than it was due to the rain falling so hard and banding into sheets. I heard a few dings from pea sized hail.

I kept pushing and punched into the main storm I was interested in intercepting. Just as I started to get into the core the storm blew itself out. The winds began to really gust hitting about 63 km/h at times but that was it, the highest gust was actually 63.7 km/h with the average around 50 - 55 km/h. You can see how the rain was just howling up the road towards me but again, it was not severe. It just looked more intense than it really was.

Again, anytime things are rocking and rolling video always takes presidence over still photos. Maybe I just have this opinion because I'm actually a videographer by trade?

Yep, the rain was just rolling through the fields!

After getting my fill of video and outflow wind I decided to keep driving towards the storms southern flank. I was getting dinged by random pieces of pea sized hail and then I had a couple dime sized stones hit me but they were few and far between. It felt like it was taking me forever to reach the southern flank of the storm but then suddenly clearing appeared ahead and I could see the definite boundary coming into view.