Posts Tagged: non-severe
May 15th 2013
On July 19, 2016
- 2013 Storm Chases
Surface analysis 12Z Wed May 15 2013
As night turns to day slowly, the morning rays of sunshine reveal showers produced by elevated thunderstorms moving in along a warm front.
Here's a radar shot showing the first target storm as it tracked southeast from Shelburne.
You can see it is the dominant storm cell in the line. At around this time I'm making my way east on the 407 to head north on the 404 for an intercept.
This was one of the few dominant storm cells approaching me from the west.
I raced north along highway 404 and stopped on Stouffville Rd just east of the highway. The thunder and lightning was nearly continuous as the storm moved ever closer. It seemed far more intense than it really was.
The storm cell was still highly elevated, it produced some small pea sized hail and heavy rain. There was virtually no wind at the surface.
You can see the back side of the storm as it passes, this particular shot was taken looking Southeast.
Here's my position relative to the storm to give you a better idea of what I was seeing.
Fresh towering cumulus going up to my immediate west along a turbulent zone of convergence and mixing aloft near the leading edge of the prior convection.
This was the second storm cell which later spiked on radar.
When this photo was taken it was still in its infancy but at this point the surface warm front was getting closer and it was later in the day so boundary layer mixing was increasing. This allowed the storm to mix down further and at least appear to be getting closer to the ground.
A little while later the same storm seen in the previous image is now east of me and beginning to hit 65dbz on the radar. You can see the rain shafts from the storm directly in front of the power lines.
Here's the radar showing how intense the storm actually appeared on radar despite its benign appearance visually.
This is a stylized image of the storm as it continues eastward. I've used a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky and create this vibrant image. At this point the storm was hitting 68 dBz and producing some small hail. A warning for Durham Region was issued, and this storm eventually made its way out over Lake Ontario.
I tried to keep pace with the storm but gave up, it was moving at well over 80 km/h.
Here's a quick analysis of the surface showing the warm front and the storms well ahead of it near the green line.
FYI - I know the occluded front is backwards, I drew as if it was a cold front by mistake
May 10th 2013
On July 19, 2016
- 2013 Storm Chases
Surface analysis 21Z Fri May 10 2013
The setup for storms was driven by a low scooting just north of Lake Erie and Ontario, the supercells in Southcentral and Southeastern Ontario formed along the warm front where a marine / lake breeze boundary interacted with the surface warm front and trigger storms
A weak elevated supercell in a low energy but moderate shear environment approaches Milton
The storm is now passing through Milton, you can see mid level clouds flowing into the storm from the Southeast (image looking west). It also presents a bit of a vaulted type structure with the usual lateral tilt of the updraft. Slight clearing between the "hail" region of the core and the heavier rain is visible just to the right of center.
The biggest problem with this storm if any is the fact that it remained elevated with limited boundary layer interaction and hence produce virtually nothing as far as wind at the surface.
Inflow / outflow and rain as the storm passes overhead and looses some of its structure
Here a screenshot from PYKL3 (Android radar software) showing my location and a weak couplet appearing on the NWS Buffalo Nexrad radar.
Here's the Meso Analysis sounding for a point nearest the storm at the given time. You'll notice the storm is entirely elevated with very little cape and very low topped since the LFC/CCL EL is ~7km.
lon=-79.813855 lat=43.555635
The hodograph data shows little in the way of dynamic shear, all the veering in this ground relative hodoraph is below any of the convective instability.
The storm relative hodograph shows a very different story, veering winds with supportive inflow exist well above the ground into the mid levels allowing the storm to still rotate (although very slowly) despite being elevated.
This explains why this storm took on a supercellular structure.
July 14th 2016
On July 16, 2016
- 2016 Storm Chases, Uncategorized
Surface analysis 00Z Fri Jul 15 2016
April 25th 2016
On April 28, 2016
- 2016 Storm Chases
This was one of those days... I had the day off work, some gear to play with, time to kill, and there was a 1% chance of storms!! North of the city it was snow and in the Southwest a warm front was pushing in from Michigan. So I decided to head towards Sarnia.
While waiting for a possible thunderstorm, I decided to throw some grads on the 16-35 and snap some cloud photos.
I haven't put a grad filter set on the camer on a while and forgot just how awesome the effect is! You can fake it with photoshop or lightroom but nothing beats the real deal.
My only hope was for an elevated storm or two, strong easterly winds off of Lake Erie were pushing the warm front back and a stationary front became established in Michigan. There was an 8 degree difference and huge humidity difference too.
The HRRR & WRF-NAM consistently kept popping a little storm just south of Sarnia so I headed to the river and snapped some photos while I waited. This is the new 11-24mm lens that I think will serve me well in Tornado Alley.
Looking south with the super wide angle lens!
Looking up with the lens at 11mm makes this willow looks stretched!
I'm bored...
Boooooooorrrrrrred
March 16th 2016
On March 28, 2016
- 2016 Storm Chases
Well, it started out as a cold, dreary, barely above freezing morning. This was the scene downtown as heavy rain along the impending warm front poured down in the still dominant cold, windy easterly flow!
The warm front burst through around 3PM and cloudy, rainy, cold skies gave way to warmth and abundant sunshine. A shortwave moving in from the southwest was also bringing shallow instability with steep lapse rates and strong directional wind shear.
Not a chase per say. I was at the airport due to work and the storm associated with the shortwave slowly grew and came into view on the North-Western Horizon.
A short while later the first of the storms was literally on top of my location at the airport! I could tell by the look of the storm that there were going to be some very strong surface winds.
The storms looked mean but were basically just a mix of rain, small hail and gusty winds. You can see how this storm has a very cold look to it.
The whispy ice rain bands about to hit!
Looking northwest, about to hit!
The storm blew through in literally 2 minutes producing winds of 95 km/h!!!
This poor umbrella became an instant victim of the storm!
Later in the day a second storm cluster began to move towards Toronto from Guelph.
The storm produced some heavy rain and lightning but fell apart as it entered the city thanks to diurnal cooling during the evening.
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!
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.
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 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.
March 19th 2012
On March 31, 2014
- 2012 Storm Chases
The first surface based cumulus that's not from a snow squall or producing snow at the surface!
Hey what can I say? It's been a long winter!
The first "thing" that eventually turned into a 32,000FT storm cell.
Not sure what's what here, radar says I'm under a storm but it's hard to tell with all these towers producing showers and the odd thunder cracks.
Popcorn storms are the order of action but that's cool, I'll take anything!
Looking down the road at new development & preparing to head in that direction.
I looked high and low for hail in the strongest storm cores, I did find some wet sloppy melted stuff embedded with heavy rain in a 60 Dbz core but that's all!
Towers to the right, a collapsing storm to the right and a crack of thunder.
This tower came out of nowhere and began rocketing upwards but alas soon evaporated at the base and went kaput but not before dropping a bit of rain.
Not much to be had with these storms, barely 500 j/k SB CAPE & a serious lack of wind shear at all levels. Still, this storms had a weird thing hanging out of the flanking line but it never went on to become organized to any degree.
The almost stationery storms did drop a fair amount of rain locally flooding out some fields and even side roads.
