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| Pat and I left shortly after 3PM and headed west on the 401 towards Sarnia. We left Toronto sitting at 20C under cloudy sky's. Things cleared nicely by London and the temp rose to about 23/24C but that was all short lived. Soon after turning on the 402 westbound things clouded over and heavy virga was visible falling out of the cloud left over from morning convection in Michigan. The temp feel back to 22/23C and Pat was definitely getting worried. I must admit, I was even a little worried for a short time. As we neared our target, the sky began to clear and open up. It was a beautiful sight and one that helped us make a good choice. When we came to hwy 21, we decided to head north away from Petrolia because the sky was more open. We ended up at 21 & Bob's Road which was somewhere just south of hwy 11 (maybe 3-5km?). Things looked good, winds were out of the SW at about 10 - 15km/h and the temperature was nearing 26C. There was also a significant difference in the humidity levels, BUT everything was well capped! The life was being crushed out of all the CU as visible in the image above. I spoke with Dave Patrick and we discussed the cap, and he generally agreed with what I had seen on the RUC. The cap was supposed to go around 7PM, which was what the model said, but I had eyeballed the sounding and figured it would go by 4:30/5:00. |
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| 5:00PM... 5:15... 5:30... 5:45... |
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| Just then, WXRadio from MI started to report storms so that sounded good. The about 5 minutes later I noticed what looked like a tower to be going up directly to our NW. Just then the phone rang and it was Dave. He confirmed some good cells had formed din MI and were tracking east. We had a short discussion about distance and timing. The storm was moving at roughly 50km/h and almost due east. It was a go, we could make it if we left ASAP. Before I could even get off the phone with Dave CG's started to come down in the distance =) |
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| The precip core become visible very quickly. While the air was humid it was still clear. Generally visibility was 15 miles. |
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| As pat and I got closer to the storm a hail shaft became visible. Dave had confirmed that this specific cell was putting down half inch hail, or at least it was according to radar. |
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| Then within second the hail pelted us as we drove east. The storm did not last very long though, it came in, hit us and raced off almost ENE, an angle which gave us no chance to catch it due to the road network. Not at 60km/h anyway LOL. Mark Rozitis called at about this time and told us that there was more stuff further south. So we raced back due south. On the way there Dave P called us and gave an exact location to sit at.. 11 and 21. |
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| So we sat and watched the storm roll in. |
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| Dave P called back and gave us a quick notification that this storm had level 3 rotation induced by a mesoscale vortex. That made things things interesting, and he cautioned us that it was putting down 1 inch hail so we sat back and waited with caution. |
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| As the storm approached it tried VERY VERY HARD to become surface based. It was evident due to wind as it switched from SW to NE (complete 180). The location of the wall cloud area came directly towards us with visible weak rotation. However it was all highly elevated and could not sustain sfc based inflow for more than 1 or 2 minutes at a time. |
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| A patch of clearing to the SW as the cell tried to organize. |
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| The whole line got closer and closer, but it quickly became very linear. |
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| We headed farther north to try and get into the heavy precip. This CG was a nice close treat. |
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| As the rain came down, the water just poured off the road and engulfed the gravel shoulder. |
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| Heading south. |
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| Still south. |
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| We tried to get back in front but it was not going to happen. We fell about 15km east and gave up. So we relaxed and headed back west. I spoke with Dave again and he told us that the hail had just died as soon the storm hi the shore and it broke into 3 separate cluster cells just as we intercepted. |
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| Looking east into the storm. It was still producing a ton of lightning at this time. |
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| This image was just really cool. |
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| After driving back west, we stopped just a
few km shy of 21 to rest and get some images. We had about an hour to wait until the next
storm came in according to Dave. *Storm is visible in center of image (looking NW) |
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| This was the flanking line of one of the cells within the middle cluster. It was clearly completely elevated, but I kept a close eye on it because I did believe there was a possibility that a high level funnel may form. It certainly would not have touched down, but non the less made for some cool video. (looking due north) |
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| Looking back NW towards the target storm just before we head off again. |
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| Finally Patrick and I stopped on a road called B-line just ENE of Grand Bend. We could now see the storm and it's core fully. The radio was FULL of static but nothing much was visible. Dave called us back and told us to fall back west... so we did. |
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| Heading through Grandbend in an eerie twilight yep setting. |
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| We stopped on cold storage road (great name eh) in the middle of an Onion field (which smelt ok but did not make us cry) and waited for the big hail core to come in. Dave called back and said it was registering 68DBz and that we should move further SW. So we did, but then it looked like the core would miss, so we moved back NE, but then we realized we were in in the perfect spot and jumped back SW. As the core began to hit it got dark... |
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| The a sudden SMACK scared us (was expecting ding ding before the smack) |
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| We pulled over on the and filmed the hail. Unfortunately we were only on the outer fringes of the cores east side. The stuff coming down was accumulating somewhat. |
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| Generally the hail ranged from Nickels to quarters. The bigger pieces were either at 2cm or just over, so it was just making severe criteria, however according to the radar there was MUCH bigger stuff further west. |
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| This gives a better idea of size. |
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| This driveway had hail just flowing down in the runoff. |
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| A little further west there was low level fog from the cooling effect of the hail. Accumulations of about 2cm created this fog. |
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| After having the road mess us up we headed back SE towards the storm. |
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| Of course we never did make it since the
storms was doing a good 60km/h LOL. Either way it was a good run, and Patrick and I saw
tons of stuff thanks to Dave Patrick and Mark Rozitis. Dave's excellent nowcast
information put us where we needed to be at just the right time and Mark's scanner and
nowcasts greatly aided us as well. Mark also gave me TWN's number so I could bring the
footage in which was GREAT. I would also like to thank Patrick Cool for his excellent
driving and endurance! THANKS GUYS!!! |
