July 16 storm chase in Estonia

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

On 16 July 2009 I went to my first storm chase. A local geography student and weather enthusiast was driving, I was the navigator. The chasing equipment consisted of a paper map, a radio and a cell phone, where we occasionally glanced at radar images over EDGE connection.

In the morning we headed off to Northeastern Estonia in Mustvee, where we were following some activity. As we reached Mustvee, a strong cell had fired up over the Lake Peipsi, and it almost even dropped down a waterspout(the touchdown did not happen though).

Later in the day in Põltsamaa we got a strong cell, and witnessed a wall cloud. We were unable though to determine rotation.

The next target was long-lasting cell in Southern Estonia(and which was also menacing my home) where we witnessed these turbulent cloud formations:

Eventually the system died east of Võru, after which we called it a day.

I was also on the road on 19 July 2009, but the log is in the works yet.

Chase log at my web site

Chase log(In Estonia) by the chase partner of 19 July event along with pictures from yours truly , will write about this with my words in the future. That day also had some quite Mike Hollingsheadian(in my definition: Clouds photographable in a way that no further processing is required - colors are powerful and contrast anyway) cloud shows.

Now that I haven't just stuck around just in one place all the time, I have learned something: Estonian weather isn't that calm and innocent as it appears at first glance.

 

[Wes Carter]

It sounds like you had quite a day. It seems like I'm hearing more and more about severe weather in Europe. Although I have been to Europe several times I was not aware until recently how much severe weather occurs over there.

From what I have read Estonia is fairly flat. Does it have a road network that is good for chasing?

Good luck and stay safe. I enjoyed the photos.

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

It depends from region. In some areas(including where we chased in 19 July), bigger roads are fairly sparse, and there are a lot of trees in the way(in various rural parts), but there are clear spots too. Nevertheless, it is quite chaseable though, and where we needed to have a road, eventually we had one. One of the issues is also $5,45/gallon(with current exchange rate) gas prices, but this can be overcome by ganging up into one car and splitting the fuel expenses.