August 9, 2000 NW of Waterloo, Ontario
There was a small outbreak of tornadoes that day in southwestern Ontario in the afternoon. Because I cannot drive, I had to rely on my uncle, who shares the same interest in storms as me, to take me out there and I had to wait for him to get off work. I was tracking several supercells on radar that afternoon and around dinner time. They were all tracking to the south east... by dinner time, my hopes for a chase were diminishing, because there was not much else going on, and the current activity was headed south east, which would have been difficult for us to catch up with. My uncle was finally home from work, and we chatted on the internet. Both of us had a good feeling that no more storms were going to develop... however once I hit reload to refresh the radar image, plans changed.
A small developing thunderstorm quickly fired just NW of Waterloo. I then received an email from a good friend who is a severe weather researcher, saying that the Exeter doppler had detected rotation within that storm... he also noted it was developing along an outflow boundary from the previous storms. This storm was developing very fast within 20 minutes. I had a good feeling in my gut now that we would see something, so we both decided to head out. While waiting for my uncle to show up, I was watching the storm get closer... nice single hard tcu towers were building ahead of the storm... great contrast against the blue sky.
Once we were on the road, we encountered some heavy rain and then it cleared. We were now in the rain free base of the storm, but it didn't look like much. We drove around some more, saw some scud, then pulled onto another road. Then my uncle turned the van around faster than you could say supercell and exclaimed "What the heck is that?!" I looked out the window and my heart just jumped. I saw this column going from the ground straight up into the clouds. It didn't look like smoke... it looked too hallow looking. Then it was gone. My uncle said it was a bit wider when he first saw it, so it was a good bet we caught a brief landspout type tornado. No pictures or video because it happened too quick and dissipated too quick... but I think this still counts as my first tornado encounter.
On May 23, 2004, I managed to catch my first full condensation funnel... it was coming down diagonaly to the right, it appeared hallow and smooth... it was a beautiful sight. It looked like it was right on the ground, because the tip of the funnel could not been seen past the treeline. Trees eventually got in the way, and once the trees cleared all I could see left was a protusion from the cloud base. Of course we forgot the video camera
Tornadoes are difficult to get on film here in Ontario.
