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| For the past few days the
models had been showing some decent potential for storms and then pow, morning of the
storms everything sort of fell apart. Pat and I were ready to chase so that's just what we
did. We headed towards London and arrived there shortly after 4PM, where Patrick ran into
his brother on Wonderland Road. After a short stop, we were back on the road again towards
a boundary with TCU just north of London. We waited and watched the radar as a weak cell
popped near Grand Bend and drifted NE towards Mitchell where it died. We saw the tower in
the above image just north of London and watched it build. We were sure we had a storm on
our hands, the towers were growing very quickly and what looked to be a flanking line
developed. Then of course it just dissipated without a trace. |
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| The radar indicated a weak
cell had formed near Exeter so we decided to head for that since it was the only thing
around. On the way over we stopped to watch a fairly crisp tower build. The problem was
quickly noted when we saw pelius caps form. The pelius formed just under a 700mb
inversion. Once the towers hit the inversion, they lost much of their vertical speed and
mushroomed out horizontally rather than trying to continue and build vertically. This was
my biggest concern on the soundings and it proved to be true. |
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| Pat pointing at the pelius
with a tower behind him. |
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| We intercepted our original
target storm north of Mitchell in Logan. There was some rain which cleaned the car, but it
became evident the cell was going to die very soon, naturally we left it and headed south
where we planned to intercept a new cell just south of Stratford. That really did not work
out, we lost the cellular signal and as a result we had no internet nor radar images. Our
only option was to keep going as planned. When we arrived there was no storm in sight,
just a flat stratocumulus deck with very light drizzle and a rainbow. Ironically it was at
this time the cell signal came back. |
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| I was still up for a chase or
up for hanging around, but with the situation looking so bleak the only real option was to
head back. Pats chase vehicle in the image above. |
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| Around 1:30AM long after I was home from the chase I
heard a call go out for a small fire at 7055 Kirby which is not very far from where I
live. I figured it was either assumed (someone say smoke but there is no real fire) or
something very minimal. Within 10 minutes, I head the first team on site going crazy
calling for tankers. Within 5 minutes at least 1 truck from each station in west Vaughan
was heading to the site, so I figured it may be something worth while to hunt down.
Naturally the main roads had been blocked, but fortunately since I am very familiar with
the area and back roads I was able to get around all of that. Once on site, I pulled up
behind the main perimeter and the officer there was very nice. Not only did he not care
about my filming it, he actually went into detail about what happened. Very nice guy! As
it turns out, I ended up selling to video to Global news and it was the second main story,
the Molson truck spill on the 401 took the spotlight. Ah well, at least I made some money
to pay for the chase fuel. By the time I got home it was 5AM and the sun was rising! Yeah,
I needed sleep. |
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