4/11/08 REPORTS: IN/OH/MI

[rdale]

Not quite as exciting as I'd hoped things would go... Morning sunshine heated us up in a hurry. My outlook was for storms to be in the Marshall (RMY) area around 1:30pm, but that was removed from the forecast thread

Initial storms had that fall string-bean look to them, which DRAMATICALLY worried me. It's something we see a lot in the off-season when CAPE isn't enough to balance the extreme shear. But I hoped that moving into a better airmass would give enough oomph.

I went south on I-69 to Potterville then back north and west along I-96 through Ionia Co. Many of the storms had weak rotation and a nice look on radar but never really developed. Back down I-69 to Charlotte FPK and enjoyed a little more action there. We picked up some nice structure, and a few spots of hail, but overall disappointed from what could have been.

Gave up the chase around 5pm. Some storms still had rotation, even moderate at times, but clouds were VERY high so GRR held off on issuing TOR's and that worked out well. They did a great job with warning issuance today. DTX didn't fare so well, ignoring the very high cloud base and dry air and popped numerous TOR's after I'd called it a day.

Had a problem with the iris on my webcam so video wasn't available, which stinks because some of the storms looked very good at times. My first chase with spotternet active, which reduced the need to announce location with my reports since NWS and other spotters also use SN.

 

[Jeremy Lemanski]

Got a late start thanks to work, but still met up the cell in tuscola county that would go onto become tornado warned in sanilac county.

Overall nothing to write home about. Some weak rotation and a very ragged looking lowering South of cass city which quickly become hidden by low clouds and fog as the storm met up with the warm front. No hail and only some 45-50mph wind gusts as the storm moved overhead and quickly NE. A couple of dead trees down and widespread street flooding was the only signs that the storm even occured.

Bring on the days of 3000 cape and dps of 70.

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

Finally..the start of Chasing 2008 for me! Having not chased in about a year..my chase gear was scattered all over my house...with lots of dead batteries, blown fuses and the like so the start of the chase was rather comical. Inverter didn't work so I had only limited computer use as the battery on that was low as well. No GPS either. Met up with new chaser Jason Harris in DeWitt and quickly raced North to intercept a cell near St. Johns. Small hail with that. Headed East to near Chesaning in attempt to get in front of a storm that showed a TVS briefly near Ovid. Didn't see much interesting there. Headed South and hit a severe core near Owosso. Paused briefly in Perry to watch all the surrounding storms..headed back to DeWitt in time to wait for a nice supercell that dumped 1" hail on us. The storm went on to produce golf ball sized hail in Shiawassee county just to the NE per somebody's SPC report.

Video of the DeWitt hail can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbPY1pbsmWo

At this point, I headed home and Jason continued on to chase the now tornado warned storm as it headed toward Flint. As Rob pointed out, the bases were high and I didn't see anything that even remotely looked like a rotating wall cloud. The day didn't quite meet expectations but was an enjoyable 1st chase of the year and Jason made for good company. Due to the fast storm motion....it was definately 100% race chasing and only had mere seconds to take any pictures. We had good initial targeting so ended up making the best of a rather subpar setup.

Included a few pic's of the chase including a couple of the supercell near DeWitt. The 2nd picture shows the storm when it was tornado warned and produced that golf ball size hail. I'm sure Jason has some better pics as I was doing the driving.

 

[Jason Harris]

MI chase questions 4-11-08 (with pics)

This a supplement to the chase report that Mike Kovalchick posted today.
And please do comment on the pics to give tips and clear up any misdiagnosis you suspect contained herein.

It was fun and educational chasing with him, and I have some pics here to share that I took while riding along, as well as some that I took when pursuing the tornado-warned storm that first had hailed on us (before it was tornado-warned) and went on NE of the Flint area.


Solo chase pics
I couldn't catch up to this storm while it was still cooking, and I don't think anyone actually reported a tornado with this storm, but I think I may have spotted the wall cloud, so inspect pictures #1 and #2 closely to see if you all agree. [May be just a shelf at this point, which would indicate the storm had gone more linear than when it first got warned. It didn't have this feature when it first came in and hailed though, and I had followed behind but with sort of a right angle approach by necessitywith roads.]

Next, after that storm there was another severe warned storm supposedly with golf-ball sized hail, and I got some shots of mammatus hanging down with its sizable anvil as it sped away to the NE also. That's pic #3 and #4

Any ideas what's in picture #5? [David D. suggested it's a beaver tail and that one can follow it towards the main updraft and wall cloud].


Next post will include the pics with Mike--limit of 5 pics per post.

 

[Jason Harris]

Rest of pics from 4-11-08 includes how not to measure hail!

Chase with Mike Kovalchick pics

Mike and I both encountered hail from this same storm at slightly different locations in Dewitt, which was our original meeting place and where we went our separate ways.

How not to measure hail is what I could call pics #6 and #7 Obviously I'm supposed to measure the diameter, but I wasn't thinking of that, and to make matters worse, the 0 doesn't start at the very edge of the ruler, so I lost some of the measurement. Hail up to an inch was falling; how big do these pics look to you folks? [The report I made was nickle-size when I called this in but other people made 1-inch hail, so I don't think my report got recognized since it was less than the greatest size mentioned for DeWitt]

Any idea of that's something notable in picture #8? Something is puffing downwards there and we could see some hail and heavy rain falling; in fact, we had to move on soon. This was near Chesaning MI, and too bad the power lines were there.

Pic #9 shows the road Mike was driving as we went through the core of a severe-warned storm near Owosso.

Pic #10 is of that same supercell Mike took a pic of coming in with the anvil, and it was the hail-producer. According to the local news (wlns) at least one person actually did get a cracked windshied from a golfball-sized nugget. But seems most reports were around 1-inch.

I probably shouldn't post too many pics lest my space get used up!

Thanks again to Mike for a fun chase!

 

[Robert Dewey]

Jason, I'd say that's between 0.75 and 1.00 inch... probably not a full inch though.

It hailed pretty hard here in Rochester, MI... enough to make the ground a little white. I'd estimate the size of the largest stone at about pea size... maybe a touch larger. Definitely not qualifying as severe.

 

[Kurt Hulst]

I started the day watching the first supercell come right at Grand Rapids. I headed to M-6 and Kalamazoo Ave. exit and watched a nice clear slot file in. This storm had a solid updraft and anvil until its flow was cut of from storms developing to its south.

Eventually I headed east and met up with Bill Osterban, and Bob Hartig, at the M-66 exit were we witnesed a classic wall cloud which I have some video of and I hoped to have some pictures, but my shutter speed was a little slow. I just started using my Nikon D40x this week so I am getting used to it. However I had two that turned out alright.

Then this storm crapped out as it went north of the warm front and the storm north of this was going out flow dominant and started to develop a shelf cloud.

Any way we eventually wound up in Owasso as we thought we could intercept a few other storms coming out of Lansing. I thought about going after the storm that was b/w Saginaw and Flint but by the road network just did not seem possible for that to happen. So around 4:30pm we called it a day and headed home.

I'll post video later this week.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I got back in from AR/TN at about 8am Friday morning, and was extremely tired. I slept until about 12:50 or so, then got a call to get up and go get out chasing. I stopped by Best Buy on the way out to get a new Firewire card and cable for my camera. Streaming video looked and went great, streaming for 2 1/2 hours with no dropouts at a very good bitrate for watching.

Headed down Vermontville Highway towards M-66, then went south into Nashville, MI. The cell to my east in Eaton County was looking good, and I headed back east towards Charlotte. Nothing impressive, so I shot back down I-69 to M-78 where I encountered 1/2 inch hail. Headed across Bellevue Rd to Leslie at that point. I decided to call it a day as I was very tired from Thursday and had tickets to go see Jim Norton at CMU and had to work Saturday morning at 7. It was good to have something near home. Too bad it didn't pan out as well as we thought!

Here's a couple of the good pictures I took from yesterday



I have also included a small video up on http://www.wx8ben.com under Chase Logs.

 

[John Thurston]

No directional shear

Played bumper cars with all this stuff as I was heading home from bust chase in S Mo on Thursday. Dime sized hail as I pulled into driveway at home about 630pm. Nothing photogenic and I think local NWS a little overzealous with warnings.

JT

 

[Bob Hartig]

I was pretty beat from the previous day's eight-state chase, but seeing a supercell on the radar making a beeline for my front door has a way of energizing me. Bill Oosterbaan and I hooked up and headed east down I-96 for the M-66 interchange, with the idea of positioning ourselves and giving the storm a little time to mature. We hooked up with Kurt Hulst there just south of the overpass. Here is a photo taken with my new Rebel XTi and Sigma 18-200 OS lens.

 

[David Hoadley]

4/11/08 REPORTS: IN/OH

Didn't see any ground circulation near Tye, TX on Wed. and just two wall clouds in west Tennessee on Thurs. (one tor. warned NW of Humboldt), but did catch a cone funnel west of Delphos, OH on Friday. After a long chase, returned home Saturday, took care of family business, and just now have time to report.

After a red-eye drive from TN, I made a mid-morning WiFi stop at Wapakoneta, OH next to a Super 8. Unable to access my usual data source (no overnight motel), I relied on SPC for the general area. When the early morning Michigan 10% tornado prob. dropped to 5%, I hesitated to go farther and contemplated an early return home --but waited a little longer. When a new Meso targeted N Indiana and S Michigan, I was committed. A chase friend in Virginia, Greg Guise, provided the tor. watch area, as I neared Fort Wayne.

Convection was building west of the city and ready to charge NE (230/45). However, similar to many cells the day before in Arkansas and Tennessee, a base would develop between precip cores but then soon rain out. Nothing was sustained for very long. As scattered cells began to merge and the line moved east, I drove into Indiana and then south, watching the southern end for re-development.

At 6:26EDT, I stopped north of Delphos, OH (40 SE of Fort Wayne) and watched a persistent base between two rain cores. After a few minutes, one of several lowerings in the middle began to rotate. With great contrast, I zoomed in and it briefly became cone shaped, about 1/2 way to the ground. Overhead, the base had broadened and briefly wrapped into a small LEWP. After several minutes, it was over --no visible ground contact. At least something to show for a long chase week.