The numbers are in and here”s the official tally:\r\nThursday, April 10\r\n States covered: eight\r\n Miles traveled: 1,650\r\n Decent storms: zero\r\n\r\nFriday, April 11\r\n States covered: one\r\n Miles traveled: twenty to point of intercept\r\n Decent storms: one\r\n\r\nIf you want a hobby that”s fraught with ironies, storm chasing just might be for you. Yesterday”s much-anticipated weather event, with a synoptic setup that some had been comparing to the 1974 Super Outbreak, turned out to be a major bust. \r\n\r\nSo today I haul myself out of bed at eleven o”clock, feeling fuzzy from the jet lag of the previous day”s marathon, twenty-seven-hour drive, and I shower up, and then I fire up my laptop, and what do I see? A mesoscale discussion for Michigan, with a possible tornado watch in the works.\r\n\r\nHuh? No way.\r\n\r\nShaking my groggy head, I step outside, and what the…? Hazy blue skies; nice, moist air; warm southeast winds–geeze, this is what we were wishing for yesterday.\r\n\r\nI head back inside and pull up my GR3 radar program on my computer, expecting nothing this early in the day. And indeed, there is almost nothing–except, that is, for a big green hail marker by South Haven. But I can barely even see a storm on the radar using base reflectivity. Maybe if I switch to composite reflectivity…oh my gosh, yes, there”s a storm, all right. The radar updates. I flip back to base reflectivity, and now I can see a very nice, compact storm with an intense precipitation core, and with a characteristic shape that tells me this little guy is going places. The next scan, I can see a sweet little hook and a nicely cleft V-notch. The storm is definitely a supercell.\r\n\r\nAnd it is heading directly toward where I live.\r\n\r\nGood grief. Yesterday I drove over one-and-a-half-thousand miles chasing storms and got skunked, and here today I”ve got a beautiful storm making a beeline for my front door. If some fast-food chain ever enters the storm chasing market, this is what I hope their product will do. McNadoes. I”ll be their first customer in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nI give my chase partner Bill a jingle, then frantically round up my cameras and laptop and head over to his business. Within minutes, we”re bombing down the road. The storm is easily in view, right behind us, organizing nicely. I can see a rain-free base, and just north of it, a precip core. We”ll head east and give this bad boy time to mature.\r\n\r\nIt is at this point that the wonders of high tech seem slightly less than wonderful. My laptop has been giving me grief for some time, and between it booting up and then conking out on me unexpectedly, booting and conking out, booting and conking, along with problems connecting to the Internet, I feel about ready to bust an aorta. Other storms are forming rapidly to our south, but I can”t tell what”s happening with any of them because I can”t access my radar software.\r\n\r\nBut the storm we”re on is visible, big as day, and it”s looking better by the minute. We continue to head east down I-96, with the idea of pulling off at the M-66 interchange, meeting fellow chaser Kurt Hulst there, and letting the storm come to us.\r\n\r\nWe do, and here”s what we see…\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nYou”re looking at a wall cloud with a possible funnel.\r\n\r\nThis, by the way, is my first attempt at adding a photo to my blog. It”s also my baptism into storm photography using my brand-spanking-new Canon EOS 400 (Rebel XTi) and Sigma 18-200mm lens with optical stabilization. I think I”m going to love this setup, and today”s chase wasn”t a bad way to familiarize myself with it.\r\n\r\nI might add, today marks the forty-third anniversary of the infamous Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak of April 11, 1965. It seems fitting to commemorate that event in such a fashion, with a supercell delivered to me practically gift wrapped as a compensation for yesterday”s long-range bust.
