7/22/10 REPORTS: MI/WI/OH

[John Vandehei]

Wasn't expecting anything today. About 45 minutes before the end of the work day, I casually glanced at the radar, as some dark clouds were just outside the window. One storm about 20 miles to the northwest had a strange kink to it. Not a hook, but a hint of rotation. Switched over to velocity scan and saw a nice developing couplet. I quickly packed up my stuff and headed out the door. Had to stop at day care, as my kids were there and the area of rotation was heading straight for it. I got my kids and warned the staff to employ there tornado warning protocols. NWS GRR issued a tornado warning seconds after I told the staff to get the kids to cover. I loaded my kids in the car and headed south for a safe vantage point. As typical for Michigan, had to do some driving around to find a spot where trees weren't blocking my view. Saw a good rotating wall cloud move just over the Battle Creek airport. The wall cloud began to edge to close for comfort, so I repositioned south and east a couple of miles. The wall cloud was less defined there as the storm weakened. I moved a few more miles east, but the wall cloud became rain wrapped, so I called it a day. Although I didn't spot a tornado (some witnesses said there was a touchdown near my location - trees wouldn't let me see it), it definitely was nice to have a little backyard chase.

 

[Zachary Lassiter]

Here's my fun from the whole situation.... Got wall cloud and a short funnel cloud.

http://www.thezach.net/blog/storm-chase-july-22-kalamazoo-mi-funnel-cloud-wall-cloud/

 

[John Vandehei]

0445 PM TORNADO BATTLE CREEK 42.32N 85.19W
07/22/2010 CALHOUN MI LAW ENFORCEMENT

BRIEF TOUCHDOWN WAS REPORTED NEAR INTERSECTION OF
COLUMBIA AND HELMER BY BATTLE CREEK POLICE.

The traffic signal seen in my picture above IS the intersection of Helmer and Columbia. If that thing dropped a tornado there, it must of happened just after I left the scene. With my kids in the car with me, I didn't want to be too close. I go that way when I go to work, so I'll check for damage tomorrow. If I see anything good, I post it.

Edit: Checked the EXIF data on my pictures. Picture was taken at 4:44pm. Tornado was reported at 4:45pm. If the report time was correct, I should have still been at that location. I still think that the wall cloud was so low it was mistaken for a tornado. Like I said, I'll check for damage tomorrow.

 

[Zachary Lassiter]

Another video of the 11PM round. Nice shelf cloud

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU94emBIFaw

 

[Nick Nolte]

Here's a couple pics of the crazy CG that supercell was producing between Fennville and Kalamazoo tonight.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

7/22/2010 Reports: Wisconsin

Pretty awesome day in southern Wisconsin.

I targeted the Janesville area and headed up that way around 2:30 once it became clear that sufficient destabilization was indeed going to build into the east side of the warm front across southern Wisconsin during the early evening. I didn't go after the early tornado warned storms near Madison, but instead sat in Brooklyn, WI watching disorganized messy convection try and fail over and over. Soon enough a tornado warning was slapped on it much to my dismay, but sure enough the lead cell eventually organized into a nice mini-supercell with a nice flat base. Eventually a big RFD sliced into the base and I thought surely it was about to produce, but a supercell to the west was raining all over it and everything was just getting completely soaked. I figured there was no way it was producing, and if it did I would never see it. I was in the process of ditching the storm for the cell to it's west raining all over it, when I got this nagging feeling that I should take one more look. Not a second after I hit an east option and crest a hill the stupid thing puts down a cone tornado. Way off in the rain, barely visible from my vantage point. I was absolutely furious. Furious that I left it and should have been closer, but ever so grateful that I pulled off and managed to see the darn thing.

I figured, okay fine, I'll keep up with this storm since apparently it doesn't care that it is getting crazy interfered with by the second cell behind it. I followed it all the way to about the Sumner area along Hwy 106 watching another nice rotating wall cloud over Lake Koshkonong. I literally had no more options for keeping up, so I figured the day was over with one stupid little rain wrapped cone.

Meanwhile, I head south back along 106 through the heavy precip core of the second storm and emerge to a beautiful RFB and wall cloud which has quite a circulation on the front end. I wasn't sure what road options lay ahead, but figure I have to go after this as long as possible. I manage to find a really good south option to get around the lake and as soon as I hit County Road N the storm produces the tornado of the day near Fort Atkinson. Nice little elephant trunk, that again was not on the ground very long but this time was a little stronger, much closer and much better contrast. The storm cycled a few more times coming very close to producing near Whitewater as I followed it east, but eventually I called it off as again the storm neared poor road options.

Big RFD cut on the first storm near Edgerton, 15 minutes before the first tornado report:

First tornado near Edgerton. It's there... just left of the tree.

Last view of the lead storm as seen atop a nice big soaking wet hill that I had to hike to get a view of the base near Sumner. I figured once I start to have to go on hikes to see the storm, it's time to call it:

This guy greeted me emerging out of the precip core just east of Edgerton, on the second storm now.

Video capture of the tornado near Fort Atkinson:

What a nice chase day. Targeted and executed well for once this year, as both tornadoes were within about 8-10 miles of my target of Janesville from 24 hours out, and I didn't have to drive more than an hour away from home. Met up with Scott Weberpal and Chris Gullikson in Janesville for dinner and then made my lightning illuminated way back to DeKalb.

More photos and some wx data on my blog:

http://prairiestorm.blogspot.com/

 

[Jim Parsons]

After months of absorbing the knowledge the members of this forum have to offer, I undertook my first successful chase using my own analysis instead of just looking at the SPC risk area and heading toward the center of it. I caught the Fort Atkinson tornado and then watched a few other things in Dane County that just couldn’t seem get their act together . . . My drive home down the river known as “I-94" was another story ;-) Over all I was very pleased with my results and I’m looking forward to the next weather event.

 

[L.B. LaForce]

Here's a couple pics of the crazy CG that supercell was producing between Fennville and Kalamazoo tonight.

WOW at the last shot-that structure is pretty wicked!

I didnt get much yesterday myself. Got to a tornadic supercell near Reading, MI a little too late. Some rain came up behind the cell, and cut off its inflow just as I was about to catch up to it. It then became outflow dominant, but before it did, there was a pretty nice couplet on the storm, and IWX has confirmed a EF-0 in Branch County, although im not sure if it was particularly from this storm.

 

[Nick Nolte]

Yeah it was a nice looking storm. The CG barrage was intense and I may have video of a transformer taking a hit, will have to review that later.

The rest of the lightning shots are on mah blog
http://nicknoltewx.com/blog/2010/07/23/july-22-2010-fennville-supercell-cg-barrage/

 

[Jarrod Barnett]

7/22/10 REPORTS: OH

Lastnight was pretty exciting here in Northern/North Central Ohio. About 6:15pm I was standing at the baseball field watching my nephew & his team win their league championship when my phone went off with a weather alert. Tornado watch for basically all of the northern ohio. I instantly got pumped and started watching the radar on my phone.

After the game around 7:30 I got home, grabbed my DSLR, scanner and some water & beef jerky and hit the road. My regular chase partner was working but I wasnt going to miss out. Notice I didnt say video camera. Yes my dumbass forgot it.

I got into the Clyde area about 7:50 which is located in Sandusky county. I was slightly more south than I wanted to be but was happy because I had good visual & was able to see the first of 3 "severe" cells roll in. The last of which was Tornado warned for the better part of the evening.

After it rolled through I headed back east into Bellevue to wait on the other 2. The first of the 2 kind of fizzled like most storms in Ohio do. The second was the warned cell.

In this area we have a LOT of corn fields. Corn this time of year is tall and very hard to see down these country roads when its clear out. When it gets dark, rainy, windy, etc... it makes it even worse. Luckily I grew up around the area all my life and have a decent feel for where I am but none the less still not a circus of fun when its a possible dangerous situation like lastnight.

The cell was still Tornado warned as it had been for about the last hour and a half when it came out of Michigan.

I had ended up just about in the middle of it. I had some rotation overhead and looked as it was trying to form a funnel. Being alone at this point sucked because I wanted so bad to stop and snap shots but safety first, but I wanted to get out of dodge before it dropped something & I had no where to go as I was in BFE.

I ended up positioning myself perfectly to sit on the slight northern outer edge of the cell, up on a huge bridge that runs over a Norfolk-Southern Railroad yard. This area offered me great visual of what was going on.

Over the course of the last cell I experienced some very high gusty winds, heavy rain, witnessed rotation, some dead calmness, some flooding, down tree pieces and misc debris from people's yards and what not.

There was supposedly a touchdown slightly west of where I was but I didnt see anything and I had a good view of what was going on with the majority of the area of rotation. However it could have been rain wrapped as there was a fair share of heavy rain where visuals would have been hindered for short periods of time.

This is from a local new channel:
Another round of severe thunderstorm Thursday evening brought heavy rains and damage to parts of northern Ohio.

A warm front moving through the area triggered severe thunderstorms across many of the counties to the west of the Greater Cleveland area.

Several tornado warnings were issued throughout the evening for the storms that moved into northwest Ohio and north central Ohio by early evening.

The hardest hit area was around Bellevue in Sandusky County where a number of trees where reported down according to the National Weather Service.

A possible tornado was reported by storm spotters in the same area. Damage will be surveyed officials from the National Weather Service office in Cleveland on Friday.

Heavy rains were also reported across Huron, Erie and Lorain Counties where doppler radar estimates showed one to two inches of rain fell in those areas prompting some minor flooding.

More storms are likely on Friday as temperatures and dew points soar the heat indices into the 100 degree range.

I have some shots of the storm that I will post hopefully Sunday. My DSLR died lastnight when I got home looking through the pics and Im leaving tonight after work for a small weekend trip so I wont have time but the first chance I get ill post up a few.

Thanks for reading.

 

[amytierney]

Well this is completely new too me so I am pretty much going on a few things that I have learned here and through the NOAA storm spotters class but WHAT a day!! I didn't actually get to see the tornado's that were produced yesterday but watched the fun of the clouds twisting a rotating literally over my head. I started out as soon as the local news have stated that there was some rotation in the Stoughton, WI area. I jetted out on 106 heading N towards Deerfield and was met by a nice wall cloud that was rotating. I tried to punch through it to get to the other side only to be met with high winds and a TON of rain so I came back through and chased it on the south side. Met another storm chaser and then headed home to check the radars once again. We recently moved to Edgerton along the mouth of the Rock River (Lake Koshkonong) and the sirens started blaring as I was pulling into the driveway. So then I left after a quick peek of the direction the next storm was coming in and headed west on 59 into downtown Edgerton. As I was coming up the hill I was again greeted by another wall cloud, this time much more developed and scary looking. I turned to head north and this sucker was chasing me!! As I was driving it was sucking the clouds up into it. I decided that it was time to get my boys out of the house (we live in a ranch style with no basement). Floored it home and picked them up, went down Cty Rd N to Whitewater to watch this thing just blow up!! As per Wisconsin, to much trees and other things to see the ground but there was enough people and cops out there watching it as well. It was my first "successful" storm chase and right in my backyard!!!! I will post pics as soon as I can find it as my USB adapter is in a box somewhere.

 

[Chris Gullikson]

Nice local chase in southern WI yesterday with Scott Weberpal, met up with Andrew Pritchard and Tia afterwards for dinner.

Models had been showing a potential severe setup for southern WI over the last few days...big issue being a morning MCS limiting instability in the nicely sheared environment. By late morning it was becoming more clear that boundary layer would recover rapidly as the nose of drier air aloft associated with shortwave moved in from west. Surface winds were backed east of 39/90 and along synoptic WF a few counties north. By mid-afternoon, a broken line of storms along the WF intensified and the first tornado warning was issued near Lodi and Lake WI. Isolated convection also began to form in extreme SW WI but was struggling in the veered surface flow.

Scott and I had targeted a little west of Janesville with surface obs showing nice convergence just west of interstate with high CAPE and helicity. The intensifying line of storms along the WF in backed surface winds drew us northeast of Sun Prairie where we observed some lowered bases, lots of scud and outflow. We backtracked southwest to Sun Prairie where we observed a nicely shaped updraft base with classic inflow tail structure and the makings of an RFD cut. We followed this east to Cottage Grove where we left it to intercept tornado warned storm to the southwest near Stoughton.

Got on Stoughton storm north of Albion after driving in core on interstate. Followed this storm east along 106 to Fort Atkinson, north of Whitwater and just south of Palmyra where we let it go to head back west to tornadic storm approaching Whitewater. Very close to base much of time to observe brief, organized RFD cuts. Multiple funnel reports are understandable on this day with the amount of rising scud associated with rain cooled inflow under slowly rotating base.
Got to west storm just east of Whitewater and watched it cruise by to our north and northeast along HWY 12. Nice lowered base with an RFD cut but lacked good low level rotation.
No hail, warm rain, lots of corn and trees and hills to block the view.

 

[Scott Lasker]

Wisconsin

Sounds like my story is similar to the others that were near the Stoughton to Northern Racine Co. line. Thought I would share my pics as well. I latched on to the first storm, but the roads messed me up a bit too... right when I believe the storm was at its best near Ft Atk. Had to settle for rotating wall clouds, etc.
First 2 pics near Cold spring. 3rd photo near Wind Lake.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Nice catches in my home turf, Pritchard!

Here's the mini-supercell that formed up over Brooklyn/Oregon as it came over the west side of Stoughton around 5:15 PM CDT:

At first it was hard to discern if any part of the lowering was rotating about a vertical axis or just bowing out/moving swiftly across the sky. It tightened up some after a short time so I called it in to MKX. Ended up just going home after it passed this spot, as I didn't feel like driving in pouring rain again.

I didn't have radar at the time - is this the storm that produced the tornado NW of Edgerton about fifteen minutes later? It appeared to be moving due east along Highway 51 in downtown Stoughton - did it dive southeast, or was it a different storm that produced?

Video in the works.

 

[Bob Hartig]

Here's a couple pics of the crazy CG that supercell was producing between Fennville and Kalamazoo tonight.

Great shots, Nick! "Crazy CG" is right--that sucker was a real sparkler.

I had been in Dunlap, IN, during the afternoon, and having finished with a couple of appointments, I fired up my laptop to see what had become of the supercell that passed over Battle Creek, MI, earlier in the afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I saw another line of supes moving in across Lake Michigan, with the frontmost cell displaying definite rotation and making a beeline for Saugatuck.

After some frantic driving, I finally intercepted the business end of the storm on M-89 a mile east of I-196 and tracked ahead of it to Plainwell. There, I dropped south on US 131 to M-43, where I parked and let the south edge of the storm sweep past me. I took a fair number of photos too, but Nick, your structure shots beat mine hollow. Nice stuff!

My full account with photos and radar grabs is posted on my blog.

I was puzzled why this storm didn't drop a tube or two. My guess is that low-level instability fizzled after the sun set, and while there was enough bulk shear to support supercells, that and 1 km helicity alone weren't enough to spin up tornadoes without better CAPE. But I don't even know what the CAPE was, so I'm just kind of flailing around in the dark. I'm open to hear a better explanation.