Squall Lines and chasing

[Peter B. Creedon]

During a lot of my local chases from Saint Charles, MO, I ended up chasing (more like being chased) squall lines. I know Tail End Charley is where action can be. What have you done when the action goes linear?

I've caught some good stuff out ahead of squall lines, but it ends up getting "seeded" by the advancing line. A Chase I did on July 18, 2010 in the morning was one such example. Action I was looking at got eaten up by the advancing bow echo. This little cell had a decent structure. I have a sketch of it somewhere. I shouldn't have been out that morning because I worked all the previous night at a liquor store.

 

[Todd Lemery]

Peter, when the storms are lined out and the tail end is a ways off, I'd just as soon go grab dinner and a beer. You could always chase down some imbedded rotation if you want too, but for my money I'll sit it out more likely than not...

 

[Devin Pitts]

Yeah, chasing linear storms is never not messy. Even if you do get an embedded supercell, the line seems to generally move much too fast to keep up with in the first place along with the tornado being rain-wrapped at best.

 

[Peter B. Creedon]

By the time most of the good stuff got to my location it would be a line, or an MCS. There was that derecho back in May of '09 that I managed ride out. Thing was like an inland hurricane.