tom hanlon
EF2
Interesting day for our area yesterday. Surely some other folks got out and chased.
WIth the cold front swinging down and intense heating early afternoon for much of the area combined with plenty of moisture it was a good setup for "something" to happen.
Leaving Columbus OH while the first warning or perhaps it was still a MD was in place for MI/IN we chose to target the NW corner of OH. Checking the local AFD's and HWO all I noticed was that the forecasters seemed to be thinking more about the Heat Index and less about severe. The last few days seemed to offer plenty of surprises and the models seemed to be off in terms of timing and placement of events so picking a target was dificult. The /exper/mesoanalysis/ page of the spc site pointed towards NW OH in many ways so of we went. Td was good, LCL was good.
Cu clouds were going up in "cloud streets" aligned from the SW to NE. Once firing the storms would head generally E or perhaps NE. They were moving at between 25 and 35 mph so they were chaseable but allowed no room for letting them get past you.
We passed under one "cloud street" and almost regretted it as the storms looked pretty strong. Still early though and we wanted to try and stick to our target and get closer to the cold front to the north. Passing under our second "cloud street" we stopped and watched a few of the storms and checked for data. By then we were near Kenton OH in Hardin county. Target was Findlay so we headed North. Paused for a nicely developing storm that exhibited nice inflow, some rotation but was not intense. It built nicely but we let it pass to our east. Heading back out on the highway we heard the crackle of the NWS warning on the radio and the storm we were just under got a severe warning. We chose not to chase a storm 20 miles away that was moving away from us and instead got under the not yet to be warned stroms to our west.
We found ourselves to be in the right place at the right time as at least three distinct cells in our imediate vicinity got severe warnings. Nice supercells for OH. We got in position on two of them. Nothing really happened. The cells reached a certain strength just this side of intense and then weakened.
By about 7:30 PM we started heading home and got something to eat. Checked data one more time just out of curiosity. The cells we had been under had triggered a tornado warning in the Akron OH area and storms in IN and IL were tornado warned. The radar showed three collections of cells. One to our South, one in Akron and one in IN. Our was still building so we raced to get under the storms at Marion OH.
We saw some nice supercells, some intense rain, some minor rotation but all in all a decent chase within one state.
--
Tom Hanlon
WIth the cold front swinging down and intense heating early afternoon for much of the area combined with plenty of moisture it was a good setup for "something" to happen.
Leaving Columbus OH while the first warning or perhaps it was still a MD was in place for MI/IN we chose to target the NW corner of OH. Checking the local AFD's and HWO all I noticed was that the forecasters seemed to be thinking more about the Heat Index and less about severe. The last few days seemed to offer plenty of surprises and the models seemed to be off in terms of timing and placement of events so picking a target was dificult. The /exper/mesoanalysis/ page of the spc site pointed towards NW OH in many ways so of we went. Td was good, LCL was good.
Cu clouds were going up in "cloud streets" aligned from the SW to NE. Once firing the storms would head generally E or perhaps NE. They were moving at between 25 and 35 mph so they were chaseable but allowed no room for letting them get past you.
We passed under one "cloud street" and almost regretted it as the storms looked pretty strong. Still early though and we wanted to try and stick to our target and get closer to the cold front to the north. Passing under our second "cloud street" we stopped and watched a few of the storms and checked for data. By then we were near Kenton OH in Hardin county. Target was Findlay so we headed North. Paused for a nicely developing storm that exhibited nice inflow, some rotation but was not intense. It built nicely but we let it pass to our east. Heading back out on the highway we heard the crackle of the NWS warning on the radio and the storm we were just under got a severe warning. We chose not to chase a storm 20 miles away that was moving away from us and instead got under the not yet to be warned stroms to our west.
We found ourselves to be in the right place at the right time as at least three distinct cells in our imediate vicinity got severe warnings. Nice supercells for OH. We got in position on two of them. Nothing really happened. The cells reached a certain strength just this side of intense and then weakened.
By about 7:30 PM we started heading home and got something to eat. Checked data one more time just out of curiosity. The cells we had been under had triggered a tornado warning in the Akron OH area and storms in IN and IL were tornado warned. The radar showed three collections of cells. One to our South, one in Akron and one in IN. Our was still building so we raced to get under the storms at Marion OH.
We saw some nice supercells, some intense rain, some minor rotation but all in all a decent chase within one state.
--
Tom Hanlon
