The Ontario Weather Page - Dave Patrick

This is my chase log from the Arthur, Ontario Tornado that touched down.

I arrived home from Chicago about 4:45 p.m. and immediately turned on the computer to see how the system was developing. I thought I may have missed it, due to the severe storms that fired up around the London area around 2:00pm, but was relieved when I saw I had not. I downloaded the latest RUC (Rapid Update Cycle) and ETA models and other satellite and radar images and noticed that storms were firing near Lake Simcoe about 5:20pm. With the capes running about 3000 and -4 to -6 lift indices, I thought that anything that started would quickly become severe. I was chatting with some other spotters and downloading new nexrad radar images (that I pay for from a company in the U.S) every ten minutes when I noticed a small blip of green northeast of me. I continued to talk with other spotters reporting they were seeing nothing when, at the 5:51pm update showed a large supercell forming in the area where the green blip was.

I got all my chase equipment together (camcorder, scanner, cameras), grabbed a fer pops and headed north from Fergus. I saw the towering storm cells forming along a northeast to southwest line. I traveled north along some back roads constantly looking at the clouds and decide on the cell to the north of Fergus. I was driving north when I noticed that a small lowering was forming to my east and a little rotation was present in the scud clouds. Due to the fact that these storms were moving east into me, I headed north to get behind them. As this storm cell passed, I caught a few funnel cloud formations on tape. The rotation was very slow and they quickly dissipated. It was then I knew I had a good cell on my hands here. I fell in behind it and started to track it. I pulled over on the road and a guy pulled up and thought I was someone else and asked what I was doing, so I told him I was storm chasing and he said that this was the place to do it (meaning the past events that have happened there). I pulled away and tracked it for about 5 kms to the east. Time was 6:25pm

All of a sudden, the storm started to back-build on me. I thought my eyes were going weird because the storms were tracking east and, here I see, a large lowering heading rapidly west at about 80 km/h. I turned around quickly and moved back west about 1 km and backed into a person's driveway giving me the option to go either way. I got the video camera out and turned to look at the wall cloud formation when I noticed a small tight funnel cloud starting to form. Recording this, it started to snake downwards from the wall cloud toward the ground. I was about 4 kms from this and, due to the fact that there was a tree stand about 3 kms away, could not see it actually contact the ground. Looking on the outer edge of the tree stand I noticed a lot of debris floating outward from it about 200 feet from the funnel and this is when I knew I had a touchdown. Time was 6:35pm. At this time I was approx. 10kms east of Arthur, a couple of kms east of Hwy# 16.

I recorded this fact and then as quickly as it happened, it started to retreat back into the wall cloud and was gone. The total time was about 35 secs. It was on the ground for about 8 secs and then rose back up. I immediately got on the phone and reported this to Environment Canada and then decided to drive north as he said that there was another cell to my west building. Took off north about 2 kms across hwy#9 and ran into the guy I had talked to before and asked him if he saw it and he was really mad he missed it. I then was in the process of calling Brian Hill Of 680 News when a lightning strike hit right beside me. It was so close that I felt the electricity in the air but did not hear it except the echo. Decided to get to a safe place to use the cell phone and call Brian. Told him what I saw and within 2-3 minutes he was on the air with the information. I decided to check the film and see if it came out and it did so I headed toward home. By the time I got home, an e-mail from Brian was in the computer asking for an interview and the rest is history.

Total Chase Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes (5:50pm - 7:20pm)

Total Chase Distance: 50kms roundtrip

What I got: 2 funnel clouds, 1 F0 tornado and lots of great memories.