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.