Chase Logs - 1998

Southern Ontario has had many severe weather outbreaks this year and all of them have been strange (in my personal opinion)  Below are the highlights of these storms of which I have chased in Ontario and the U.S.

March 28: The first severe event of the year.  Many watches/warnings were issued across the province including a Tornado Watch for London and Waterloo/Wellington counties. The major threat from this storm turned
out to be wind damage with gusts of over 100 Km/h reported and straight-line rain. I saw many cases of tree damage and the odd shingle gone from houses but nothing more severe than that. The dynamics were not in place for tornadic thunderstorms. As I was not expecting this storm so early in the season, I had not equipment to record any images.  

March 30: Following quickly on the heels of the first event, the second severe weather outbreak for 1998 included more severe thunderstorms, and an unconfirmed report of a tornado sighting near Orangeville. I chased the southern end of this storm system around Arthur towards Orangeville along #9 highway and saw that most of the energy was north in Grey/Bruce district. Although I was not in the area at the time of the reported tornado, I did head up the following day and reported seeing lots of tree damage from straight line winds or a possible microburst.  I could not confirm a tornado touchdown and reports from other people say this too.  My camera had a dead battery and could not get a replacement for it and I had not replaced my camcorder that got stolen so no photos again.  Such is the way these things go.

April 16: This severe outbreak was not meant to happen.  The storms originated in Michigan causing to tornadoes near Sarnia area and tracked over Lake Huron.  With the temps of the water, these storms still stayed together and dropped 24 mil hail in Grand Bend.  I was surprised at this as I chased to Parkhill (20kms south) and saw very little formation with this system.   Seemed the area was too stable ( the RUC model was stating capes about 500 and it seemed a cap of stable air aloft was preventing a serious flare-up.  Weather radio was not issuing updates so I decided to head back toward Fergus.  When I hit Kitchener, I heard that a tornado warning was in-effect for Wellington County and that towns in path were Fergus (where I live).  Called home and told the folks about it and hightailed it home (time 7:30pm).  Arrived in Fergus at 8:15 and the storm predicted to hit Fergus at 7:30 was just arriving but the storm was dying out.  Very little lightning, rain, no hail.  Called E.C. and reported and they said that it was dying out and that the watches and warnings were being cancelled.  Got a few nice video shots of lightning but little else.  What I learned from this?  Why travel 550 kms when you can sit outside your back door and see it and always go with your gut feeling and don't chase a bad weather set-up.  At least I got to test out the new video camcorder.

Total chase distance: 550kms.
Total time spent: 6 hours

May 16 - 23:  My Chase vacation to the Midwest and Northern Plains was a success catching my first forecasted tornado in Hayes Center, Nebraska on May 21.  Sadly, with dusk fast approaching and poor filming, I failed to catch it on film.  I did chase many storms in Iowa, Missouri all successfully but only one tornado.  Stupidly, I left my voice cassette tapes on my dash and they melted so no detailed chase logs.

Total Chase Distance : 9000 kms/5400 miles
Total Time: 8 days

Jun 2 : This was a day I was monitoring from about 7am to see where I could chase.  Dynamics were in shape for explosive development of supercells, nice slow front movement and clear skies ahead of the front.  About 1:30 pm, I headed up 10 kms SW of Arthur near Drayton. I want to intercept the developing thunderstorms and to head to the other side of the front before they began to produce a lot of rain and dangerous core-punching problems.

    As I passed threw the light rain band of a developing cell,  I looked to my SW and noticed a developing wall cloud.  Pulled over to the side of the road and watched it develop for about 10 mins when a small funnel cloud started to form.   This formation lasted about 6 secs before rear flanking down draft cut it off and it rapidly dissolved and the wall cloud dissipated.  I watched the read flanking line start to explode to the SW and this development was about 30-40kms north of Norwich (which eventually caused 2 tornadoes and serious damage)  Oh well, missed one on the day.  I did get down there to check out the damage which is listed in the June 2, 2025 chase logs section.

    Decided to head home and passed through Elora on my way to Fergus.   Just south of Elora on Hwy# 7, I spotted some trees down and a motorcycle in the ditch and paramedics helping the person.  Figuring he was tended to, I reported this to E.C. as a storm-related accident and never gave it another thought until I got home.   Left for the evening and returned to find that this was the onset of a tornado that passed threw The southern part of Elora, picked up and touched back down in Fergus for about 1 km and then dissipated. Time est. 4:45pm Okay, now I was mad as I missed 2 in one day.  Caught a funnel but the tornado was less than 3 kms from my house.   Anyway, the next day, I conducted a damage assessment which is listed in the June 2, 2025 chase logs section. An Aside: I received an e-mail from the guy who was the motorcyclist and he explained what he remembers, which was strong winds and noise and then he was 40 feet in a field.  A person driving behind him says that she saw the tornado pick him up and throw him into the field. Also, Canwarn net reported it as well.

Total chase Distance: 95 kms
Total time: 3 hrs

June 15: Weird day yesterday.  As I left to go to Toronto to meet some friends, I unconsciously put a camera and compass into my car.  Little did I know that as I started driving, I saw a large thunderstorm complex build to my south (S. Wellington County) and then the tone came that it went severe.  This storm was short lived and dumped quite a bit of rain and lots of cloud motion and scud so I detoured and chased for about 40 mins to see if anything developed. Got a couple of nice pictures but really nothing to write home about.  Looked for a minute that this storm was starting to get really organized but then died very quickly so headed to T.O.

June 25:  I hit the jackpot today.   I decided to chase and was rewarded with a nice tornado near Arthur, Ontario that I finally got on film.  I say this as my photography skills have been lacking in the past.  The complete set of pictures and chase logs are listed in the June 25, 2025 section.  This system caused many funnel cloud reports, heavy downpours and intense lightning and 1 confirmed tornado.

June 26: Another series of severe storms passed through the area again early Sunday morning (but most associate this with the Saturday storms) I was returning from an outing with friends showing my video from the early tornado I filmed and ran into this.  This was the most intense storms I have seen in Ontario to date.  The lightning show was so impressive that, at times, I could drive with no headlights.  The lightning was striking so close to me that I could feel it (very scary as I expected I would get hit).  The information I got from E.C. was that they were recording over 3,000 strikes per 10 minute intervals on their lightning detection equipment.  I saw some beautiful cloud formations and saw a nice wall cloud formation over Guelph about 1:30 am.  These storms caused many people to lose power, cable and cellular phones.  In addition, a few houses caught fire due to lightning.  Tragically, 2 people were killed by lightning.  Please review my Storm Safety section about how to prepare for these powerful storms.   For pictures of this storm and the intense lightning, you can see it on the Southern Ontario Tornado & Severe Storms Page.

Jun 29: This was a photography session that turned into a little more than I bargained for. Some regular (or so I thought) thunderstorms developed in the early evening (9:30pm) and I figured that this would be a good safe night to practice my night shots. It started out between Fergus and Arthur with some great CC and CG shots but then something changed.  At night it is difficult to see storm changes but a definite increasing in the lightning was noticed.  I decided to head east to follow the more intense lightning when I noticed some swirling scud and definite precipitation core.  I pulled over and was pounded with an approximate 80km/h gust front.  Rode that out for about 4 mins Decide to head back home and about 25 mins later, my weather alarm went off and these storms went severe about 40 kms to the east (Guess they recorded the wind gusts I was experienced). As I don't chase severe storms at night, these storm were tracking away from me and had not looked at any radar to see where these storms were tracking I headed home with some good photos and another lucky chase. Time 11:15pm

Total Chase Distance: 35 kms
Total Chase Time: about 2 hours

June 30: Well this day takes the cake.  I went out last night after my surprise chase (read here) and got home about 2 am.  Looked at the radar and noticed a developing line forming in Michigan.  Figured I could get a few hours of sleep and head out about 6:00am.  Got up at 5:45 and turned on the radar and noticed that the system seemed to have developed more towards Brantford and I really did not feel like heading down there.  So I got in the car, drove around for about 10 mins and called it quits and headed to bed as I was tired. Time: 6:15am  Woke up at 9am to find that a tornado touched down about 20 kms to the south of me in Guelph at 6:30am.  This was about 5 kms from where I drove to and turned around to head home. This was another classic example of trusting your forecast and staying where you are and go to bed early the night before a chase. 

Some notes: This was the third tornado to touch down within a 20 km radius of my house this year So I batted 1 for 3 around home this year.

total chase distance 25 kms
total time 25 mins

No Chases in July.  Dead month for me and busy with work.

Aug 24:  This day was setting up to be a late afternoon event and I wanted to make sure I had some light to work with before night came and I could not chase.  My target area was just south of Brantford for about 6:30pm so I hopped in the car at 4:30pm and headed down there to read the sky and set up.  A line of thunderstorms had already formed when I was leaving near Windsor and were tracking to this area.  When I arrived about 5:45pm (traffic through Cambridge was awful), the sky was quite overcast and mixed and this lead me to believe that this might be a bust of a day.  With little sunlight being seen, these storms took there sweet time forming.  Am radio was prepare with lightning staccato but nothing visible touching the ground.  I stuck around for about an hour watching and waiting for the front to pass to see if some increased visibility was present behind the front.  I got lucky and the skies cleared for about 25 minutes and I saw 2 well defined thunderstorm cells form with some impressive rear flank development.  With the rapid loss of sunlight as night approached, I snapped off a few pictures and decided to head into Brantford to have dinner with Marty Jefferson, a friend of mine who has call me radar reports on past occasions  Time 7:30pm

This is where I am glad I have a rule not to chase at night.  During our dinner, I noticed the lights flicker about (9:30pm and decided to cut dinner short and take a look outside.  Noticed a nice thunderstorm with some intense lightning to my NE.  The lightning was starting to increase in frequency Dan and Marty said"  Is that the one you wanted?"  laughing and a little frustrated I replied" ya, but it came to late, my forecast was off 2 hours and no light to chase"  He said go get some lightning shots and then head home"  So I departed and headed east about 15 kms (to prevent city lights from invading my photos) and snapped off about 10 shots before I got dismayed and headed home knowing I was missing something but glad it happened that way so I could not have made myself chase at night.

Thankfully I did head home.  When I arrived, I found out that that cell was indeed tornadic and showing a tornadic vortex signature on radar.  Watching the cell track through the Niagara Escapement to Niagara on the Lake and then dissipate.  Reports the next morning indicated some damage to homes, cars and police reporting a tornado.   E.C did not report anything but a chaser I know did chase this storm at night and almost got into bed with it.  Needless to say, he learned from that (I Hope) and I was at least happy I forecasted this one even though I was off 2 hours.  I think that was because of the lack of visibility and haze precluding the frontal passage in our area.

Sept 6:  This was a photography chase session at night. A line of thunderstorms had formed over Lake Huron in the late afternoon and tracked eastward.  As these were expected to reach the Fergus area at 9 or so, I figured I would head to my favorite place between Fergus and Arthur to do a little photography.  These storms were severe with some small hail, intense rain, lightning and some strong wind gusts but the models did not show any signs of tornadic formation happening.  Knowing this, I headed out and parked the car about (9:30pm or so) and set up the camera and start clicking.  I got lucky and fell between 2 precipitation cores so got very little rain and did not have to move.  As I was packing up for the night (10:10pm) my cell rang and it was a friend in Guelph asking where I was!!  Forgot I was going out that night in the heat of the chase.  I had no time to head home so I drove to his place directly.  Watching the sky, I noticed another flicker of lightning to my west (time 10:30pm).  Thought nothing of it for about 10 mins until all of a sudden his window screen blew across the room and rain and lightning and thunder stated pounded.  A supercell (know this after reviewing radar and echo top images) formed almost directly above his house)   I dragged him in the car and took some video and stills of the pounding rains strong winds and road flooding in Guelph.  When I asked if he wanted to chase the backside of this cell, he said " Um, No, you are nuts to go after that"  So I dropped him off.  I headed to a prime viewing spot just south of Eden Mills (a hill that you can see for miles) and watched this cell track towards Burlington.  One of the most beautiful sights to this storm was the moon appearing from behind the anvil   to highlight the whole storm structure.  by the time I  came back to earth, the photo op. was gone but still one of the most beautiful sights I have seen chasing.

Sept 29: Today was a day you could say I chased in most of Southern Ontario at one point or another.  This day started off pretty early in the morning with a few severe cells blowing up in the morning hours.  I thought a few cells would form from Goderich southward and track northward along the warm front.  I head toward Arthur (9:30am)and then westward toward Listowel .  My reasoning was that I could catch the first cells coming off the lake near Goderich and head south and it moved eastward.  I received a cell call from another chaser (Jeff Longland) about some cells forming to the east of Bayfield that looked impressive so I took hwy 23 to Mitchell and waited for these storms to pass me.  I observed a few flashes of light and some little rain when these cells dissipated and I was hung out to dry 100 kms from my house Time:12:30pm.  I decided to head home and see what the computer was saying.  about 2:30, I saw a line of intense and fast moving (100 km/h) thunderstorms tracking east from Michigan.   Tornado watches were issued for Grey/Bruce northward about this time. Since I had never been chasing near Owen Sound, I got in the car for my second chase of the day and headed up that way to intercept.  I knew these cells were moving very fast and I was really just going to watch as chasing them at that speed would be unsafe and nuts.   This system was very mean looking as it approached me just east of Tara.  The storm line was moving so fast that the clouds ahead of the structure seemed to be compacting and bowing outward much like a space ship.  I though I say a few lowering and a possible gustanado but later review indicates rapid swirling scud along the gust front region of the squall line 4:30pm. It looked to me that the southern end of the system was breaking up and the north skies becoming darker and more intense.  As north was into the lake ( and I forgot my aquachasetruck at home on the trailer),  I followed the system into Owen Sound and then headed south for home.  About 10 mins from Owen Sound, the phone rang and Jeff told me another line of cells was moving in behind the first and should be there within the next 2hours.  I hung up and was looking for a place to turn around when the phone rang again.  This time it was my sister reminding me of a family function I was expected at in Burlington at 7:30pm.   With 2 1/2 hours to get from Owen Sound to home to Burlington ahead of me.  I cut the chase short.  I did find out that the second line was a better storm from a chaser (Jack Kertzie from Buffalo) visiting Canada and his video and footage show some interesting storm structures.

Total chase distance: 815kms over 2 chases
Total time: 8 hours over 2 chases.

November 10:  This was a surprise chase day being so late in the season. Guess it coincides that this years chase season started early in March. With the intense northeastern hitting lake Superior and the subsequent winds and cold front associated with it, the situation was getting ripe for some storms.  I awoke at about 7:30am and began reading the models and tracks to plot my target area for interception.  After calculating that these storms would not make it to where I live before dark, I decide I would have to go to them and head west to do it.

I was following a line of  severe thunderstorms in Michigan tracking eastward across the state.  The interesting aspect of this line was that it stretched from Mid Michigan all the way to the Gulf of Mexico along the cold front .  With these storms tracking eastward at about 60 km/h, I decided to leave Fergus at 12:00 to make Windsor for about 2:30.  E.C predicted them to arrive around 3pm so this would give me enough time to set up and wait for the show. After passing Chatham, I switched the scanner to NOAA weather radio out of Detroit and was surprised to find that these cells were moving quicker than anticipated by E.C and would hit my area in about 20 mins.  

I pulled off the 401 at Tecumseh and headed north about 3 kms before puling into a back road and found a wide open area with visibility for about 5 kms in every direction.   Got out the camcorder and was starting to video tape this ominous squall line coming in when a wind gust (I figure about 100km/h) blew me have way across the road and started rocking my car.  Decide that I should stay in the car and filmed this line as it hit giving blinding rain and winds that were actually picking the rain off the roads and throwing it back into the atmosphere. As I was turned the wrong way filming it (the lens kept getting soak and smeared and I was actually get drenched from the winds blown rain, I decided to get back on the high way and see if I could get ahead of it again and film it a little better.

At Tilbury, I got off and headed north and this time positioned the car the opposite way to avoid getting soaked in my car.  As the squall line came to me, I got some beautiful footage of the progression of the rain eastward along the road until, about 25 feet from me, I bailed into the car to prevent getting wetter than I already was.

As I choose a freshly plowed field with black loam as a backdrop,  when the rain and intense winds hit,  it actually looked like blowing snow across the field.   As the rain hit the plow rills, the winds picked it up and almost created the crests you see when the wind hits the ocean waves.  Quite A nice site.  As I headed through Tilbury I saw some small branches down but little in the way of damage. After a successful chase and some good video, I head to Toronto for a night out. And aside: You may have seen it on the Weather Channel.

Total chase distance: 650kms
Total chase time: 8 hours

End of Season and my chases.

Totals: 14 chases in Ontario & 10 chases in the U.S.

Results: 3 bust days all of which tornadoes touched down. 3 great days with 2 tornadoes and 3 funnels, numerous severe storms.  A great year for me with some great learning experiences and some good success.