Posts Tagged: southern-ontario
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
April 1st 2013
On July 19, 2016
- 2013 Storm Chases
Surface analysis 21Z Mon Apr 1 2013
Looking at this photo it sure does not look like April 1st, and no this is not an April fool's joke I've concocted, it's a not a joke at all!
Mother nature decided that we've not had enough winter this year and it seems even with balmy days between they are simply teasers.
(There has been no Photoshop work done to this photo, it was taken purely using a Cokin graduated tobacco coloured filter)
My car (not visible but right of the frame) was actually partially blocking a lane. It was all fine and dandy since there was no traffic and this snow was low drifting stuff.
Then just as a few cars came into view the wind started blasting and the drifting snow became a low visible wall of white a few feet tall. It was more than tall enough to shroud my car from any unsuspecting drivers so I made haste and got out of here as quickly as I could!
I'm not sure if the municipalities or province for that matter still has any salt in reserves. Whatever the case, this highway was just glazed over! I almost wiped out just stepping foot outside of my car!
April 1st huh? Sure feels like I'm north of the Arctic Circle, not north of Orangeville.
This is the 0 visibility stuff blowing where I was parked.
Yeah, not a good idea!
There were tons of little snow devils (vorticity pockets known correctly as eddies) dancing around in the fields. Unfortunately, what looked cool to my eye looked like crap to my camera.
But for the record, you can see the winds and squalls made things nasty in these exposed places.
Here are some of the cellular convective snow squalls heading southeast into the Greater Toronto Area (I'm looking southwest).
Some of the tops on these squalls must have been pretty high but I did not see any lightning returns on any of my services.
(Again no Photoshop, just that Cokin Tobacco filter)
Yeah, the car was clean! I decided after the fact this was a bad idea, seeing as I was actually getting dirty!
Note to self, don't unnecessarily go out of the way to drive through snow squalls when the car is clean!
No rainbows here, but the convective lake effect snow bands were so cellular in nature that you could literally be under a clear sky above while all around you snow is pouring down.
Just to illustrate the point.
This was highway 10 just north of Mono, as you can see this looks it typically does in the period between late November and early March.
It sure is cruel to have it look like this in April, it's simply not funny!
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.
April 11th 2013 Ice Storm
On July 19, 2016
- 2013 Storm Chases
Surface analysis 15Z Thu Apr 11 2013
A smattering of ice pellets cover the roof of a home in Leaside, Toronto as the first wave of precipitation from the impending storm moves in
The low elevation of Leaside in Toronto allowed the snow up north to instead fall as ice pellets down in the city. The expected change over to rain was stunted as more cold air flooded in and mixing began to occur aloft.
Commuters in Brampton near hwy 50 & Queen St get on a Zoom bus as heavy wet snow falls.
The snow was not expected, a combination of colder air flooding in and additional mixing aloft meant that the precipitation, which was supposed to remain as ice pellets eventually changing to rain fell almost entirely as snow with the first wave of precipitation.
A "surprise" winter storm blankets Langstaff Rd just west of hwy 27 with a coating of wet snow.
This unusual late season storm left many municipalities unprepared to treat the icy road surfaces and commence plowing operations.
The snow also created an additional forecast element not forseen, with a fresh blanket on the ground it meant that temperatures were able to remain cooler longer and this would aid in the freezing rain process which would begin with the second wave of precipitation much later in the day towards evening.
Normally at this time of the year the first spring sprouts are shooting out of the ground, but that seems unlikely given the fresh coating of snow.
This was the radar image at the time showing just where the snow, ice pellets, freezing rain and normal rain sat. You can see the blues and purples (snow) effecting the GTA and areas eastward while much of the Hamilton, Halton and western portions of Mississauga were seeing a good mix of ice pellets (orange). Further south, along the QEW on the south shore of Lake Ontario most of the precipitation was falling as rain (green) and to the west a pocket of freezing rain (pink) had developed over Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph and other surrounding communities due to cold air damming at the surface.
As I started my missing late at nigh to find freezing rain as the second wave of precipitation moved in ice accretion was rapidly building.
Here, a road sign stands frozen near Caledon.
The streets of Orangeville required a pair of well sharpened skates.
A driver heads west along an ice covered Broadway in downtown Orangeville
Glazed city streets
Temporary signs posted outside of a new subdivision in King City give a good idea of how icy conditions were becoming in areas that were relatively close to the big city.
The icy roads led to a less than quick morning rush hour commute. This unfortunate driver lost control and took down a traffic signal on Dufferin just south of Steeles in Toronto (Downsview).
The wet soil, strong easterly winds and additional load from the ice were too much for this tree to bare.
Eventually it come toppling down near Kipling and The Westway in Toronto (Etobicoke).
Icy geometry at its finest
This winter-wonderland photo is the highway 400 northbound on ramp from Rutherford Rd
It was very icy!
Kettleby, like King City had significant ice accretion on most objects.
Between the still semi frozen ground and the soaking rains that have been persistent for nearly 5 full days, many fields slowly turned into small lakes. So not only was the freezing rain a nuisance for drivers and utility companies but it also added to the growing flooding situation in some places.
A ranch fence is covered with icicles, this is a great example of just how much rain was really coming down.
A ranch fence is covered with icicles
A beautiful snow and ice covered farm in Nobleton
Covered in ice
Don't take it too fast!
This tree not only bends down right to the road, but also stretches out across a power line. It's a good thing this particular line is fully insulated otherwise there would have been arcing and fire most likely.
This is a perfect illustration of how & why most power outages occur.
This feeder line is fortunately insulated to prevent arcing but the weight of the branch alone in many situations is enough to bring down wires and disrupt electrical service.
My weather station stopped providing wind data, this picture explains why.
Even in the in the 50km/h easterly winds the ice was still strong enough to overcome the spinning wind cups and freeze the unit solid.
This is what the data from my weather station looked like. The chart starts at midnight on April 11th, temperatures early on remain relative warm until about 7AM which the first precipitation falls and evaporative cooling takes hold. From that point on temperatures continue to remain around the freezing mark but there is a lull in the precipitation shortly after midday. Then the second wave starts around 11PM and by 4AM on April 12th my anemometer just freezes solid. From that point on rain continues to fall and freeze until almost noon when finally the wind cups start spinning.
Here's the trip log, a whopping 341km and I didn't even really go that far!
It was an intense 11 hours of news gathering with taking photos on the side.
This map does not even account for the local utility companies, this is just the provincial agency that handles rural areas and primary lines. You can see there are plenty of outages!
Here's a zoomed in image showing power outages in Southwestern Ontario. What a mess!
Here's a zoomed in image showing power outages in Eastern Ontario. It's an even bigger mess!
This image is showing one of the earlier REG-GEM (Regional GEM) forecasts. The model had an excellent grip on the scope of the storm and freezing rain area even though it was a full 48 hours away at the time.
Courtesy of SpotWx here's the GEM forecast just north of my house in Vaughan.
April 18th 2013
On July 19, 2016
- 2013 Storm Chases
Surface analysis 18Z Thu Apr 18 2013
Hard to believe that less than a week after the ice storm I was out chasing a large ragged bowing squall line with temperatures around 25 Celsius. April is really a month of extremes!
Storm motion with this bowing segment was 59 degrees (Northeast) at 57 knots (105 km/h)
You'll see how the storm progressively bows as it progresses north along the line
Here's a quick screen grab from my tablet showing the radar at the end of my storm chase day. You'll notice the a large bowing segment heading off towards Uxbridge, that there is the storm which bowed out right over my head in Bolton/Caledon.
July 14th 2016
On July 16, 2016
- 2016 Storm Chases, Uncategorized
Surface analysis 00Z Fri Jul 15 2016
July 8th 2016
On July 10, 2016
- 2016 Storm Chases
The first really active chase day of the year for Southern Ontario that was not a bust with widespread convection and severe weather ranging to hail to wind and even some local flooding. The entire day basically focus around an incoming low pressure system from Michigan with a trailing cold front that was crashing into very hot and humid air as a 500mb shortwave scooted past to the north.
After a quiet May and June, the storms were welcomed and helped to ease the drought conditions imparted across much of Southern Ontario thanks to a very dry and storm free spring and early summer.
Surface analysis 21Z Fri Jul 8 2016
I started the chase day in Woodstock Ontario around 2PM as I focused on two possible targets eventually narrowing it down to the area around Goderich. As with every storm chase, looking at the surface observations and being in position early rather than late is always important and critical! Playing catchup or being unaware of the atmospheres potential is never a good thing and can really make or break a chase day.
This was one of those days, plenty of potential with clearing skies and otherwise good timing for the storms. A cold front was swooping in from Michigan while a warm front lifted through Southern Ontario bringing in hot humid air!
TD's jumped significantly just behind the warm front and boundary layer moisture was aided by rainfall overnight from a weak MCS that pushed through.
I stopped in Woodstock and eventually Mark Robinson (a fellow chaser) met up with me. We then headed off to intercept a storm that was slowly coming across the lake. This was the view over an hour before the storm was due to arrive.
Long before the storm arrived this shelf feature was visible on the southern periphery of the storm.
What was interesting with this storm was that it was sitting in the center of a meso low, perhaps thermally induced? Whatever the case, it was in an area of enhanced vorticity and there were winds curving into the storm from the Southeast. This was very interesting to observe, especially since the night prior the WRF-NAM basically forecasted this and was spot on!
The favourable low level winds were also effectively pushing the supercell composite index up ahead of the storm. At one point there was a strong TVS signature visible over the waters of Saginaw Bay. So there was definitely verifiable rotation occurring and all the dynamics were drifting east with the storm.
Mark with his periscope feed running!
The shelf from the storm was slowly getting closer and strong knuckle convection could be seen above the shelf feeding from left to right (south to north) into the storms dominant cell.
The storm at this time was now about 50 kilometers away and beginning to pickup forward velocity.
The latest radar scan had the storm taking on a bowing appearance with a persistent pocket of rotation in the NW quadrant where you would normally find a bookend vortex signature.
These little fingers of moisture were getting lifted all along the edge of the forward flank downdaraft.
As the storm continued to close in the structure now becoming visible was just awesome!
At this point in time the rotation in the northern portion of the storm seemed to simmer down somewhat. I'm not sure if that's due to the storms distance from the radar increasing or if the rotation was actually falling off, but whatever the case, the storm still had a very impressive radar signature.
Believe it or not, this is a single 11mm image. I cropped out the shoreline (didn't like the look of the grass). The storm was much closer than it looks in this image!
At this time the storm is about 10 kilometers away!
This is one of those moments where breaking out the 70-200mm lens was a good idea! It's hard to explain, but sometimes you just need to zoom in and focus on the key points of structure that are just amazing.
The structure on this storm was more reminiscent of a high plains supercell or a moisture packed HP storm roaring through Nebraska, but this was Canada over Lake Huron.
Despite this storm having a more linear and bowing appearance on radar, the curvature literally bent around into the primary updraft giving it that power high precipitation supercell look. The shear values were right, so this storm was definitely a super cellular hybrid of sorts.
Here's a panorama stitched together from three separate images. What a beast of a storm, just beautiful!
Around this time, the couplet was back on radar and the storm was looking even more powerful with higher dBz values showing up in the strongest portions of the storms core.
What not a true mothership in the classic sense (that's reserved for LP supercell storms) this stacked shelf really had a nice curl looked to it that had that mothership type look. If you look near the edge of the leading shelf, thanks to light refraction, you can see a thin dark line marking the edge of the marine layer. You'll not the storm bends it upwards and eats it!
I zoomed right in to show just how green the area inside one of the folds along the stacked shelf cloud was becoming. There was definitely some hail growing but the 30C air at the surface with the very high humidity was ensuring that most, if not all of it, would melt before reaching the ground.
The storm was probably only 3 kilometres away at this point. The air was still calm if not blowing slightly towards the storm at the lookout location I was perched upon.
This was the last image I took before packing up and heading out. Again, this is super wide at 11mm, but rest assured, the storm was virtually on my head and I had very little time to spare.
There were many lightning bolts crashing all around me which was the other reason for the rapid retreat. Lightning is the biggest danger, you can't predict it and don't see it coming until it's too late and I don't mess around, it's a killer.
I'm not sure how far away this strike was but it must have been no more than a few hundred meters at most. There was no delay between the sound and flash. A few other chasers were just getting in their car when this struck.
While less dramatic than the first frame of video, this gives a better idea of what was getting struck, and I'm still not sure? Was it a tree? Rock? Dock? Whatever got zapped sure felt it though!
Mark, John and myself bolted east to try and get ahead of the storm. This part of the province is pretty wide open and flat with only the occasional row of trees to obscure the view!
Dashcam Video from Exeter with strong winds blasting in.
July 1st 2016
On July 6, 2016
- Uncategorized
This was one of those marginal looking days. Rain showers through the early morning, a migrating meso low within a larger synoptic low and good shear dynamics in poor chase territory with marginal CAPE. I've seen many setups like this before many times and they either barely work, or fail altogether!
I kept an eye on the surface charts and by noon saw some potential with clearing migrating in from the south and a good forcing point near the center of the meso low.
I figured, why not give it a try! I was resisting the idea since I don't like chasing east of the 404 but whatever, I had nothing else to do!
I targeted a storm that soon formed near Mono Mills (right in the triple point) and continued tracking east through the Keswick area. The storm appeared to be healthy and was the only cell regularly pumping out lightning. Basically it was in the sweet spot and a good play I figured.
I blasted north and intercepted the storm near Udora. It was very underwhelming with no structure and a dirty shelf cloud. The environment ahead of the storm was also very wet and rainy. I was not impressed and left my camera gear in the trunk! It was one of those "well this sucks" moments.
I decided to fall back south and let the storm overrun me somewhat. Again there was no structure or anything! It was looking really blah and there was so much rain I couldn't even dare to get my camera gear out from the trunk and just ended up using my phone to snap pictures along the way. I was really not expecting much at all after seeing the lack of structure.
I stuck with the storm and it had some 30-40 km/h outflow winds at best. Despite looking blah I continued to follow it east hanging on the southwest side of the core. As time went on the outflow winds seemed to gradually get stronger.
As I punched through what I thought was the core I could see what looked to be another core area directly ahead of me. It was strange because what I was seeing and what the radar was showing really did not add up. Also note the wind direction here is northwesterly.
As I entered the new core area I could see some very rapid cloud motion above my head but it dissolved into the rain. So I put my foot down and really blasted east fast. The winds were predominantly westerly with the odd little push from the southwest.
I eventually entered into a part of the storm with calmer winds but there was some scattered tree debris on the road indicating higher winds up ahead. No big deal, the winds were moving parallel with my motion so punching through wasn't all that hard.
I was so distracted driving that I never really payed close attention to the next radar update, and it didn't dawn on me that the storm had an inflow notch region forming.
Suddenly just as I neared the edge of the second core the winds began to really get gusty which was concerning since the road I was on had tons of trees, big trees, which made me uneasy. The winds which were blowing from the west suddenly switched direction and began to blow hard, easily 80+ km/h from the south. This is when I took a proper glance at the radar and was a little shocked.
Here’s a gif loop showing the tornado crossing the road.
Two videos showing the tornado crossing the road.
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.
Tottenham – EF1 – 2014
On July 3, 2015
- Tornado Damage Images / Surveys
On the afternoon of June 24th a weak EF1 tornado was spawned from a non-supercell thunderstorm. The tornado damaged several homes and killed one horse.
Goderich – F3 – 2011
On July 3, 2015
- Major Events, Tornado Damage Images / Surveys
Here is an assortment of damage photos I took in Goderich less than 24 hours after a large F3 tornado ripped through the town.
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
Tornado damage in Goderich, Ontario
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.
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.
July 23rd 2012
On July 23, 2012
- 2012 Storm Chases
Some fo the weather models were a little crazy going all out! I was more conservative in my approach to this potential chase day... or at least I tried to be!
This is the 1:30PM surface analysis I whipped together, at the time everything seemed to be up in the air but I was still confident storms would fire.
This photo was taken on Airport Rd at the 25th Side Road looking due east at a developing storm over Beaverton. Echo tops were estimated to be 45,000ft when this photo was taken.
Here's a photo of the Beaverton cell as seen by the KBUF radar. You'll see it had a wee little hail marker in there at the time.
This beautiful storm near Dundalk produced a non-rotating wall cloud and had some wonderful structure.
As the storm cell tracked SE and moved farther away more of the storm as a whole became visible and it looked beautiful.
This was an impressive shot I could barely fit into the wide angle. Not only can you see the wall cloud under the rain free base but you can also see the full structure of the primary updraft and its flanking line plus the rain to the left side of the image.
After following the first storm for a while it became high based and began to fall apart. Thankfully everything was firing along a boundary sinking south and these fresh storms exploded near Melancthon.
The storm core was less than impressive, there was plenty of heavy rain and small hail but nothing too substantial as far as wind went. The storm also had a cold, elevated look to it. Probably a result from training over the previous storms outflow.
This storm which was just a little to the west of the previous storm was in untouched warm air and had beautiful billowing updraft and several interesting lowerings.
Most impressive was the lowering on the west side of the storm as well as the impressive rain foot closer to the northern forward flank.
Blasting south to keep pace with the storm as it headed towards Orangeville narroly missing Grandvalley and interesting outflow/inflow feature presented itself as a hybrid shelf cloud which was fed by westerly inflow.
Near the Caledon Village the OIrangeville cell or what was left of it morphed into an interesting multicell cluster with an amazing amount of motion and scud activity but nothing that really presented itself as threatening.
A small rain and hail shaft to my immediate south near the Brampton Airport
This was taken just a short jog down the road from the previous photo, again you can see how in some places the storm appear high based and in other they have a much lower base level all a result from transecting outflow.
This photo was an accident as I clicked the shutter while rounding a corner. What can I say? It turned out great!
Unfortunately, the problem with the while Caledon area and northern reaches of peel is that the whole area is tree laden. I was still able to get some sunset shots where the sky peaked through the tree canopy.
Here's a shot of the storm cluster as it moved over Brampton producing small hail of up to quarter size and some wonderful lightning. The storm continued south and eventually moved out over Lake Ontario.
