Posts Tagged: storm
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 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.
December 20th 2013 – The Historic Ice Storm
On December 22, 2014
- 2013 Storm Chases, Major Events
The December ice storm of 2013 can be described with one simple word, hard.
It shattered records, cut power and through the heart of the storm I was battling a personal tragedy, the loss of our beloved Beagle Junior.
The storm was bad, my loss painful and combined it was just a hard week.
Ice storms are probably some of the hardest events to forecast because a subtle change in temperature, wind flow or almost anything can tremendously change things.
For two weeks the EMCWF weather model eventually followed by the Canadian and finally American models hinted at a large storm before Christmas. The uncertainty slowly became not whether a storm would hit, but what kind of weather it would bring?
Would it bring a mix of snow and ice pellets or rain turning to freezing rain? No one really knew, it was such a borderline event any shift in track or even a small change in conditions would have a drastic impact.
Above all else, I was dealing with a sick dog, a sick furry child that needed surgery and was headed in Friday morning for what I was reassured would be a quick, simple, extensive but complication free surgery.
I had no idea at the time, but two very different storms were barreling towards me.
As the forecast date drew closer it became more and more apparent that a large freezing rain event was possible, then probable, then likely.
It was really a two punch storm, the first wave of freezing wave would arrive very late Thursday night and continue through Friday morning with a larger second wave arriving Saturday evening into Sunday morning.
The storm arrived in the Toronto area Friday morning just after midnight as warm air was ushered in with the first of the two systems. The precipitation began as snow but quickly changed over to mix of ice pellets and eventually freezing drizzle.
Roads quickly became icy and this unfortunate driver in Toronto lost control striking a utility pole. This power outage was number 1. It would be the first of many.
Sanders, salters and trucks sparying brine began to appear and they were out in force battling a relentless enemy falling from the sky.
By 10AM Friday morning many places in the GTA were either slightly above or just at the freezing mark. The sublimation process and evaporative cooling helped the drizzle freeze in the ever so slightly above freezing weather.
Christmas is always such a busy time! Juggling personal life, work and everything else can be overwhelming! This was the last data I looked at before the world came crashing down. It was ominous, almost an inch of liquid was forecast.
The storm continued through the day Friday with the ice ever increasing slowly due to a mix of spotty showers and rainy mist.
Then it happened... the vet called, it was 6:30PM and she said "you better come, Junior (our dog) isn't doing well". My girlfriend and I rushed down to the vet clinic, it was a complete shock. Earlier we had been told he was fine, the surgery went well and he was doing fine. Then hours later everything was upside down!
We stayed there all night Friday and soon the darkness turned into daylight as it became Saturday morning. Junior was doing better, he was conscious and acknowledging us. Then shortly after noon, everything went south, he was struggling to breathe, his organs were failing. He was sick, he was going to die and there was nothing anyone could do to save him.
He passed away around 12:35 that afternoon.
We were devastated, Jen was sick with grief and there I was, barely holding my composure, it was a mix of destitute anger towards the vet, grief from the loss and a bill that balloon into the $8000 range.
Junior was our child, he may have had 4 legs but we took him everywhere, even scheding vacations around him and Jen may as well have been his biological mother seeing the way she treated him.
Between grief and pure exhaustion, when Jen and I arrived home, we just collapsed. I was not heading out into the ice storm, checking data or doing anything weather related, I simply did not care.
I briefly somehow pulled my mind away from everything to take this photo and some distant transformers exploded. Just before I pressed the shutter button we lost power in the house.
Without power my internet modem would not work so my cell phone was my only data bridge. I was curious to see the outage data and a little alarmed at how bad it was getting out there since most of the power lines in the suburbs are underground. This meant primary feed lines were going down, not only residential lines!!!
