Left Turlock at 1:45pm, originally planning on picking up I-5 and heading south towards developing cells over the western San Joaquin Valley. Just before reaching I-5 I heard about the tornado warning for the Sacramento area so I changed my plan and decided to head north up I-5 to intercept this cell. Finally intercepted this cell about 50 mi NW of SAC near Arbuckle around 4pm - by this time it was moving into the Coast Range and weakening rapidly. I then heard about a new severe warned cell to my south in Solano County. Although the cell was low topped....it featured an impressive shelf cloud and was producing frequent cloud to ground and cloud to cloud lightning. The precip core even had that familiar bluish-greenish tinge - I've never seen that in a California storm before. Unfortunately due to the abundant almond orchards in that area I had trouble finding a good spot to get a picture when this storm was most photogenic. Drove up into the hills near Lake Berryessa to do a core punch which revealed just enough pea sized hail to cover the ground. Storm then rapidly weakened with loss of daytime heating and moving further NW into the Coast Range.
I was quite surprised to see how many people were out taking a look at this storm....not nearly anything like OKC or ICT but I'd guess I saw at least a dozen people out taking a look at the Solano County storm.
Put some pics up of the storms....and a rather strange bovine encounter....here:
http://www.theperksofchasing.com/accounts/...1/pix050221.htm
I was quite surprised to see how many people were out taking a look at this storm....not nearly anything like OKC or ICT but I'd guess I saw at least a dozen people out taking a look at the Solano County storm.
Put some pics up of the storms....and a rather strange bovine encounter....here:
http://www.theperksofchasing.com/accounts/...1/pix050221.htm
