Background:

The atmosphere today was slightly unstable but there was a ton of moisture available for thunderstorms to feed off of. I was monitor storms in the region since the early afternoon and was particularly interested in any development to my west. Storm were popping to the north and south of me but nothing that I wanted to chase. At 2:40 pm a cell exploded near Stratsford and began to track eastward, As I was picking this up on the Detroit radar, I was waiting for the Buffalo radar to pick it up so I could get a track and see if it was intensifying.

At 3:00 pm storms began to start popping all over the place. The cell I wanted was hitting 35,000 feet and seemed to be building. However, other cells were forming around it. At 3:10 pm the storm track was looking to intersect just south of Arthur but I decided to wait another 10 mins for 2 more updates. At 3:15 pm, my tracked changed as the cells began to take a slight east southeast track now and I changed my target to Alma/Drayton area. At 3:20 pm, I left for the chase.

Chase:

As I headed to Alma, I began seeing the cells to my west and decided to head west a little further south (just north of Fergus). I came into the outer edge of the rain core and experienced some moderate rain and a nice outflow line along with it. Winds gusted to 40 km/h with some nice lightning but the intensity was not there. I decided to head further southward at. I was about 5 kms north of Elmira when I found a new cell developing that was rapidly forming. I was on the wrong side of the cell to the northwest and had to endure about 15 mins of rain so hard that I pulled over. There was some intense road flooding going on by the time the cell moved.

At this time, I received a call from Jeff Longland and he asked what I was seeing. As I was buried deep in the storm cell and my cell phone was losing the signal, I quickly told him to call E.C. and issue at least a heavy rainfall warning but it looked to me that it was becoming severe and organized. After the rain passed, I heard the warning issued for this cell and I decided to head east when Jeff phoned back and that rotation was being detected on the cell to my east. This was not the cell I was just in but a cell further east and tracking southeastward at 30 km/h. The area of rotation was being detected just south of my back door in Eramosa. This was 20 kms from me and easily a driveable distance. I was told that the rotation was probably rain-wrapped and that a warning would not be issued until a visual on this cell was made.

As the cell that passed by me was heading south, I headed towards Eramosa at 4:50 pm and witnessed a beautiful supercell from the backside highlighted by the sun but weakening tops indicating the cell was weakening. As the cell had picked up significant speed, I knew I was unable to catch it now. Also, I did not want to track it either as it was heading into the Milton region and I don’t chase in populated areas. I decided to drive a few of the roads around the area that the rotation was detected to see if I could spot any damage that would indicate a possible touchdown. I did not find anything in a 5 km radius of crisscrossing the road network. It either did not touch down or was not visible from the road. I did see a few large 6-8 inch diameter trees down but these were very isolated and scattered in nature. After making the observation, I headed home and arrived back at 5:50 pm of regenerating them.

I arrived home and had some dinner and began typing up my chase log when I checked the radar and saw that a tornadic cell had formed in Northern Lower Michigan and these cells would track and hit my area late in the night. After tracking the cells until they hit the Buffalo radar, I decide at 11:40 pm to head up to Harriston and try my hand at getting some lightning shots and some video. I saw some cells to my east that were affecting areas like Orangeville but there was no way I could get anywhere near them so I went to my target area and waited for about 10 mins. The cells had some incredible lightning for about 2 minutes before the rain hit. At around 12:45 am, minutes after the rain hit, the cells seemed to die out. The lightning decreased and heavy rains became the main event with these cells. I decided that I had spent enough time in the rain today and called off this chase. Without the lightning, photography was not an option and I was getting tired. Headed for home and called it a night.

Thanks Jeff for the updates and calling E.C. for me. Not a bad chase day but not a scenario setup for chasing. These storms where HP (High Precipitation Cells) and this made spotting and chasing difficult. I did manage to fire off some stills of this storms but, with the amount of rain falling, they all look blurry due to the rain. As such, they are not worth posting and wasting your bandwidth.

All Photos and information unless otherwise noted are copyrighted 1999 by Dave Patrick.  Any use other than authorized by them is against the law.  If you wish to contact me regarding use of these photos, please e-mail me. I have left any copyrights off the images to show the images unaltered digitally (except where stated)