10/11/10 Reports: PA

[Mark Ellinwood]

The day looked marginal up until the day before the event, with mostly unidirectional winds and dewpoints in the 55F-60F range, but it was a month since our last chase, and improving conditions drove me to call Jason Foster and set up a chase on the morning of. We set out from Gaithersburg, MD around 12:30pm and drove north towards Scranton, PA to get in front of a developing line of showers which helped to indicate where the good air was going to be.

We made it to Scranton just in time, as a cluster of severe storms was quickly closing in on the target area. We drove for a bit to find a decent view (which is really, really hard to do in PA) and saw lots of vivid CG and IC lightning with the approaching cell.

We went south of the cell as more severe storms began popping up to our west. We were able to catch a lot more lightning as strong (not severe) outflow winds jostled the car and tripods. At one point, one of the cells nearby had a broad area of rotation with it, and that cell ended up downing numerous trees in the nearby town of Pittston. Unfortunately, it hasn't shown up on SPC yet.

It was after dark by the time we got there, but the emergency manager on scene described the situation and attributed it to either straight-line winds or a downburst. From the damage that we did see, the pattern seemed to be somewhat radial, so I would go with a downburst. However, I can't say that with confidence given the small amount of evidence we were actually able to see along the road.

I have a few screen grabs to share, but Jason was the one taking the stills. Hopefully he can post a few on here in a bit. Unfortunately, my screen grabs aren't spectacular:

The tree that was cut up had fallen onto a power line and bent the sign. Jason's pics blow mine out of the water, so let's hope those get up ASAP. For some reason, I waited until now to start posting about our chases in the Mid-Atlantic.

 

[Jason Foster]

Yup...I'm so lazy about posting a post-report for our/my mid-Atlantic chases (thanks Mark for doing it and pushing me to do so).

We started the venture in the Gaithersburg, MD area and drove ~ 215 miles to the target area of Wilkes-Barre & Scranton area (approx. 4 hr. drive time) as Mark mentioned.

Before actually getting to the target, did see a cluster of storms form and heading toward State College, PA ~18z. Later noticing the north end of that cluster breaking off into isolated cells and have better velocity, VIL, tops, etc. (as well as Mark's forecast) we knew to continue northeast.

By 20z the storms had past State College and we were now racing to keep in front of those storms and head for growing number of warnings along the broken line of isolated storms.

We did get in position, as Mark mentioned, after a great number of zig zags and circles around city blocks, and testing exit after exit along I-81. After we let the first storm overtake us, we did drive south on I-81 to get out of the core and attempt to re-establish a good view for more lightning images.

During the trek south, off to my right (northerly view) I did see for a split second what at first I questioned at first as a spin up. I quickly looked to the cloud base (once I lost the view of the suspicious area) but did not see rotation. I also somewhat dismissed it as just steam as there are from time to time smoke stacks which omit white smoke/steam.

As Mark said, nothing as of yet out of the Local NWS WFO on the damage we later observed and documented. I am not ready to say I saw anything yet, but I'm keeping the fingers crossed for official word.

It was a decent chase, and glad to get at least one more under the belt for the local area for 2010. Very active locally, and damn impressed with Mark's forecasting ability (I've lost count how many tornado warnings we were on this years...and close to official touchdowns). Still the illusive Mid-Atlantic tornado is yet to be caught.

Here are some of my photos (and yes...I'm aware in my haste...that I misspelled warrior LOL):