Tom Stefanac
EF2
Haven't been able to make my plains trip yet this year but had a nice local supercell in Southern Ontario.
Energy was conditional at best with CAPE of ~1000 j/kg and limited daytime heating due to cloud cover moving northeast across the area from Southern Michigan. Clearing began late in the day after 12PM as a dry pocket visible in the SPC 700mb meso analysis moved in as huge drop in TD's. This was followed by a surface wave/trof that was forecast to trigger the storms with an associated moist zone.
The first storm fired along the boundary wave/meso-trof moving in and held onto maximum shear as it literally rode along the warm front.
As you can see SRH was pretty good and the storm was relatively well vented even though it had only meager energy.
A fellow storm chaser (Dave Patrick) and I intercepted the storm just north of Arthur near Mount Forest as the storm tracked almost exactly over CWLS which is the fcst sounding site for the above hodo/skew-t. We were greeted by a storm that looked like crap on radar but produced a beautiful ground hugging wall cloud as it came into view.
The storm had 10 knot inflow out of the south and southeast, and a nice RFD kick as winds switched to the west as the cell crossed highway 6 in front of Dave and myself. Dave was busy pointing at some rotating scud.
The storm eventually began to work its way north of the warm front as the 500 mb jet nose gave it a push, and the wall cloud cycled several times.
There were plenty of lowerings with good active inflow but it never did produce an elusive Ontario tornado.
The storm we were chasing eventually wandered too far north of the boundary and became partially elevated while ingesting a whole set of fog along the Niagara escarpment.
Unfortunately due to the weak amount energy in the environment convection behind this storm struggled to go up, I was optimistic this 10,000ft cloud would do something but it just looked interesting at best.
At the end of the day this just goes to show how localized supercell parameters can sometimes be!
Full account here http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaughanweather/sets/72157633609855943/ or here http://www.vaughanweather.com/chase2/May_22_2013/index.html#1
Tom Stefanac
Energy was conditional at best with CAPE of ~1000 j/kg and limited daytime heating due to cloud cover moving northeast across the area from Southern Michigan. Clearing began late in the day after 12PM as a dry pocket visible in the SPC 700mb meso analysis moved in as huge drop in TD's. This was followed by a surface wave/trof that was forecast to trigger the storms with an associated moist zone.
The first storm fired along the boundary wave/meso-trof moving in and held onto maximum shear as it literally rode along the warm front.
As you can see SRH was pretty good and the storm was relatively well vented even though it had only meager energy.
A fellow storm chaser (Dave Patrick) and I intercepted the storm just north of Arthur near Mount Forest as the storm tracked almost exactly over CWLS which is the fcst sounding site for the above hodo/skew-t. We were greeted by a storm that looked like crap on radar but produced a beautiful ground hugging wall cloud as it came into view.
The storm had 10 knot inflow out of the south and southeast, and a nice RFD kick as winds switched to the west as the cell crossed highway 6 in front of Dave and myself. Dave was busy pointing at some rotating scud.
The storm eventually began to work its way north of the warm front as the 500 mb jet nose gave it a push, and the wall cloud cycled several times.
There were plenty of lowerings with good active inflow but it never did produce an elusive Ontario tornado.
The storm we were chasing eventually wandered too far north of the boundary and became partially elevated while ingesting a whole set of fog along the Niagara escarpment.
Unfortunately due to the weak amount energy in the environment convection behind this storm struggled to go up, I was optimistic this 10,000ft cloud would do something but it just looked interesting at best.
At the end of the day this just goes to show how localized supercell parameters can sometimes be!
Full account here http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaughanweather/sets/72157633609855943/ or here http://www.vaughanweather.com/chase2/May_22_2013/index.html#1
Tom Stefanac
