August Reminiscences: My First Successful Storm Chase

Ah, August. In its own way, it’s a lot like February: a month whose respective season of the year has settled in and ripened into predictability. Upper winds are weak and storms are often the pop-up type, providing a quick flash-and-bang along with localized rainfall before fizzling out. Yet on the horizon, like the first cirrus wisps of a fast-moving cold front, you can see change coming.

This morning I awakened to the distant grumble of thunder, and when I opened the drapes, the sky was an odd, fish-flesh paleness with darkness moving in. Oh, joy! Upon hearing me stir, Lisa stepped into the room with a smile and told me that a squall line was approaching. Now, that’s the way I like an August day to begin! I fired up the computer and consulted GR3. It was a skinny line, but the NWS was saying big things about it’s being quite the wind machine. Eight miles up the road, the KGRR station ob reported heavy rain; yet here in Caledonia, we got just a mild spray of precipitation, the lightning called it quits, and the line which had threatened to enter like a lion left like a lamb. Now it’s no longer even detectable on the radar.

More thunder is in the forecast for today, though, and for the next few days, as a weak warm front sloshes back and forth and as air mass storms generate more boundaries to fire up convection. It’ll be a bland but enjoyable show.

While my attitude toward August may seem patronizing, this month is capable of producing an occasional potent surprise. On August 24, 2007, I was sitting in the Hastings library when a line of storms formed just to the west and drifted directly overhead. I had my laptop with me with GR3 running, but my forecasting skills and overall experience were still pretty embryonic, and I dismissed some telltale signs, both radar and visual, because forecast models indicated a straight-line wind event.

The storms matured overhead, blasting Hastings with rain and lightning, and then moved to the east and steered an EF-3 tornado through the town of Potterville. I could have easily intercepted it if I had known what the heck I was doing. There it was, a perfect chase opportunity, gift-wrapped with a large ribbon and dropped smack into my lap, and I was too dumb to untie the bow. Aaargh! Four years later, I could still whap myself alongside the head.

But God showers his kindness even on the ignorant. My first successful chase was eleven years earlier, back in August of, I believe, 1996. I don’t remember the exact date, but I can assure you that in those days, cluelessness was a level of expertise I had yet to attain. However, I had at least learned a few things about storm structure and a few concepts such as shear and CAPE. So when the morning blossomed into an exceptionally sticky day–dewpoints had to have been in the mid-70s–and when I noticed clouds in the afternoon leaning over and curling at the tips, I sensed that something was up.

Around 4:30, I happened to glance out of one of the wrap-around windows at the place where I worked and did a double-take. A wall cloud was forming just a mile or so to my south. Hot dang! I watched it for a bit as it moved eastward, then decided to do something about it.

Leaving work early, I hopped into my little Nissan Sentra and blasted after the storm. I had no laptop, no radar, no weather radio, no experience, and very little knowledge. Instinctively I stayed to the south side of the storm. But as it neared Ionia, I could no longer make out cloud features. I wasn’t even certain that the storm still existed. I hit M-21 and traveled east a ways, then north, smack into the precip core. Yep, the storm was still there. But where was the wall cloud? Was there still a wall cloud?

Emerging from the rain, I headed back west, then south down M-66, effectively circling the supercell. As I approached Ionia from the north, the wall cloud came once again into view. Cool! The storm most definitely still had its teeth.

I tracked behind the storm down M-21, getting right to the rear edge of the circulation. Near Muir, a streak of white condensation shot suddenly out of the woods on the right side of the road half a mile in front of me. Was that a tornado? I wasn’t sure, but it looked mighty promising. Also a bit unnerving. I dropped back and put a little more distance between me and the updraft area.

A while later, somewhere in the open country around St. Johns, I parked and observed as the wall cloud reorganized east of me. While I didn’t realize it at the time, I was watching a classic supercell, as nicely structured and impressive as anything I’ve seen out in the Great Plains. It tightened up, with a nice inflow band feeding into it. Then, to my astonishment, a beautiful, slender white tube materialized underneath it a mile away. Extending fully to the ground, the ghost-like tube translated slowly to my right for a distance of probably no more than half a mile, then dissipated. I had just seen my first tornado!

At that point, the storm weakened. No doubt it was just pulsing, but I dropped it and headed for home. However, I soon discovered that another storm was right on the heels of the first one, making a beeline toward me down M-21.

What were the odds that it, too, would be a supercell? Plenty, of course, but to me at that time they seemed as remote as lightning striking twice in the same place. Nevertheless, something told me that I needed to exercise caution, a hunch that verified as I headed back into Muir. An evil-looking flying saucer meso was approaching the town. Hmmm…maybe it would be prudent of me to drop south.

A couple miles out of the path of the updraft, I parked, got out of the car, and stood on the roadside listening to the thunder grumble and watching as the mesocyclone drifted uneventfully over Muir and vanished off to the northeast. Then I climbed back into my vehicle and headed back to M-21, and west toward home.

I was stoked. I had witnessed my very first tornado! Wow! Thank you, Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you!

It was a milestone in my life so huge that hitting the deer just outside of Ada seemed like practically a non-event. Within a nanosecond, the yearling bounded out of the woods and into my path, driven by a powerful urge to bond with my radiator. Much to both of our chagrin, it succeeded.

But you know, I love a good story, and I recognized all the elements of a great one, a real red-letter day. Not only had I experienced my first successful storm chase, but to top it off, I had also collided with a whitetail and demolished my front end. It doesn’t get much better than that–or at least, it wouldn’t until fourteen years later on May 22, 2010, in South Dakota. That was the ultimate storm chasing experience. But that’s another story.

As for this story, all fun and excitement aside, I had learned a sobering lesson about the dangers of storm chasing. I had come face to face with the dark side of nature–with a force that, beautiful as it was, was also fearful, uncontrollable, and deadly, capable of wreaking havoc on a scale that beggars description. No question about it, deer are dangerous. I enjoy seeing them at a distance, just not up close.

July 22 West Michigan Supercell and Lightning Fest

I haven’t seen a storm like last night’s storm in Michigan in a long, long time. Man, what a beauty!

Non-stop lightning, much of it appearing to be positive strokes that lasted for seconds at a time, along with a veritable feast of anvil crawlers, made for a photographic smorgasbord. Plus, the storm structure–as much of it as I could make out at night, illuminated by the incessant lightning–was truly impressive. If only the storm had arrived an hour earlier, when there was enough light to really see the thing!

I had just finished doing a couple of interviews down in Dunlap, Indiana, for the book I’m writing on the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornadoes. My meetings

required me to forgo chasing a supercell that moved through the Battle Creek area as the warm front lifted northward, and I was curious to find out what had happened with it. Pulling into a parking lot, I fired up my computer, opened GR3, and gaped. A line of supercells was advancing across Lake Michigan from Wisconsin. The first one in the line looked great–SRV showed definite rotation–and, headed on an ESE trajectory, the storm was poised to make landfall around Saugatuck. Winds there were almost straight easterly, and they were beautifully backed across most of lower Michigan. Hmmm…what did the VAD wind profile look like at Grand Rapids? Dang, sweet! How the heck did that kind of setup wind up in Michigan?

The storms weren’t moving terribly fast, around 25 knots. Could I make it in time? I was bloody well going to try. There was no denying the rush of adrenaline now galvanizing me, thrusting me into chase mode. I hit US 20 and headed west past South Bend, where the highway merged into US 31 north.

I still had a good 40 miles to go by the time I connected with I-196 near Benton Harbor. I wasn’t sure whether I’d catch the storm by the time it made landfall. Maybe I’d be better off playing more to the east. But I decided to take my chances, and that turned out to be the right move. I couldn’t have timed it better.

As I approached M-89, the eastern part of the storm had made landfall, but the radar showed the rotation still out over Lake Michigan. It wouldn’t be there for long, though, and, having shifted its trajectory south of Douglas, it was now heading straight at me.

Bingo! This was exactly what I’d been hoping for. Leaving the Interstate, I headed east along M-89 and found a nice, open field a mile down the road, just west of 66th Street, 4 miles south of Douglas and 4 miles west of Fennville. Then, turning my car around to face the incoming storm, I parked and grabbed my camera out of the back seat.

The lightning in this beast requires superlatives to describe it. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of high-voltage CGs, delivered with the unbridled, over-the-top enthusiasm of a 4th of July fireworks finale and accompanied by the incessant grumbling of thunder. There were times, as the lightning cells moved past me and surrounded me, when I felt like I was sitting inside an immense flashbulb–a flashbulb that kept firing again, and again, and again. Oh, man, what an extravaganza of pure, searing power and beauty! I’ve done my best to capture it, but my skills as a lightning photographer fall far short of what this storm had to offer. Now, my buddy Kurt Hulst, he’s Da Man when it comes to getting fantastic lightning shots, and I know he got some last night. Me, I seem to have a problem getting a good, crisp focus at night, but I try.

By and by, the flickerings began to illuminate a cloud feature I’d been looking for: a hint of a beavertail off to my northwest. It’s location confirmed what the radar was telling me: the storm’s mesocyclone was moving straight at me. I was in a perfect location–and all this time, standing out in the field near my car, I had yet to feel so much as a drop of rain.

The mosquitoes were thick and nasty, and I was getting eaten alive, but viewing at my position was excellent. Farther east, I’d be getting into thick woods, and since the storm wasn’t exactly rocketing along, I stayed put until the meso got too close for me to be able to distinguish its features. Then I moseyed east a few miles.

I parked again for a few minutes at 63rd Street and noted that what had begun as a stubby beavertail had rapidly grown into an enormous inflow stinger. To my northwest, I could see what appeared to be a large, low wall cloud–hard to determine exactly what it was or what it was doing at night, but it looked convincing enough that I called it in to KGRR.

I tracked just ahead of this storm all the way to Plainwell. M-89 proved to be a perfect route, angling southeast along roughly the same path that the storm was taking. On the outskirts of Allegan, I stopped long enough to grab a few radar images. On this page, you can see a nice vault on the base reflectivity, and pronounced rotation on the storm relative velocity. (The circle just southeast of the town center marks my location. Ignore the marker with my name farther to the southwest on SRV; it’s old, an archive from when I dropped off of Spotter Network.)

A little farther down the road, I pulled aside again where a large, open stretch afforded good viewing. The mesocyclone was clearly visible, with a formidable-looking flange on the north side, nice striations, and an impressive inflow band circling in overhead. I hung out at that location until the lightning drew too close for comfort, then hopped back into my car and continued east.

At Plainwell, I dropped south on US 131 past the Kalamazoo exit, caught M-43 west for a mile or so, then parked in a parking lot and let the storm’s southernmost edge blow past me. The storm was still tornado-warned, but the radar indicated that it was weakening–cloud tops lower, VIL not as robust. North of me, just on the other side of M-43, a sheet of rain cascaded out of the wind-blown darkness into the luminous orange domain of the street lamps. Within half a minute, it was upon me, and for a short while, I sat and enjoyed the blast of downdraft and deluge. The rain that I had managed to elude all night had finally caught up with me.

Finally, as the storm bowed out on its journey eastward, I drove back to US 131 and headed for home. I stopped again for a while at the Martin exit, long enough to see what would become of another supercell that was moving inland from the Lake. It, too, quickly bowed out, but, in keeping with the tone of the day, it lit the after-midnight sky with a bombardment of lightning.

It was good to finally pull into my parking lot, climb the stairs to my apartment, and step inside. It had been one heck of a day, and I was ready to call it a good one and hit the sack.

As nasty a storm as it was, why didn’t the Allegan County supercell drop tornadoes? The storm earlier in the afternoon had produced at least one tornado near the Battle Creek airport; why not this one too? After all, it and

its compatriots had peppered Wisconsin with tornadoes prior to crossing the Lake and heading for West Michigan. All I can surmise is, CAPE was an issue. Winds certainly appeared favorable for tornadoes, and F5 mesoanalysis indicated 1 km helicities ranging from 150-250 across the area as late as 1:00 a.m. The RUC model sounding for KGRR maybe overdoes helicity, but it’s interesting to see what it says about instability. All I can think is that daytime CAPE–whatever it may have been; I never took the time to find out–petered out after sundown, and the shear alone wasn’t enough to spin up tornadoes. That’s my guess as a non-meteorologist, and I’m ready to get other insights and opinions from more knowledgeable heads than mine.

Whatever the case, last night’s was one heckuva storm, and the kind of chase I don’t get to enjoy too often in Michigan. It was nice to finally get such a great opportunity.

Waterspout Prediction and the Waterspout Nomogram

After last Saturday’s busted waterspout chase, I’ve become curious about what goes into predicting waterspouts. It’s an area I haven’t paid much attention to, but after reading a paper on waterspouts sent to me by Mike Kovalchick, I’m interested in learning their forecasting parameters.

I had always thought there were just two categories of waterspout: non-mesocyclone and mesocyclone. But the paper presents four categories: tornadic, upper low, land breeze, and winter. All of them fall within a range of variables depicted on a “waterspout nomogram” that correlates convective cloud depth and the difference between water temperature and 850 mb temperature.

Tornadic waterspouts cover a broad swath of the nomogram. The remaining three kinds fall within more specific territory:
* Land breeze waterspouts require a minimum convective cloud depth of 5,000 feet, stretching all the way up to 32,500 feet, and water/H85 temp differences between 11 and 19 degrees C.
* Upper low waterspouts require a minimum convective cloud depth of 6,500 feet, stretching up to 36,500 feet, and water/H85 temp differences between 9 and 19 degrees C.
* Winter waterspouts, as one would expect, are a different animal. Convective cloud depths range from 2,250 feet to 9,750 feet, with water/H85 temp differences starting at 24 C and apparently extending beyond that indefinitely.
* All of the above presume 850 mb wind speeds of less than 40 knots.

This is obviously an extremely simplified summary which I’ve extrapolated from the waterspout nomogram. The nomogram brings out variables that I haven’t addressed here, and it’s well worth checking out in the aforementioned paper (see above for link).

Developed by Wade Szilagyi of the Meteorological Service of Canada, the nomogram is in use for predicting Great Lakes waterspouts, and evidently is under consideration for use in the Mediterranean Sea as well. It looks to be an easy-to-understand tool, and one I’ll surely be using as the Lake Michigan waterspout season ramps up.

June 19 Central Illinois and Indiana Storm Chase

Approaching our storm from the north near Normal, Illinois.

Approaching the storm of the day south of Normal, Illinois.

After Iowa’s blue-sky bust on June 18, yesterday provided some welcome and much-needed activity. Between illness and May’s ridge of steel, my chase expeditions this year have been limited. The Edina, Missouri, tornado of May 13 has been my only tornado to date for 2009. Yesterday did nothing to improve that statistic, but it did offer a vigorous, classic supercell with some great structure that ensured my 1,650-mile, two-day chase with my buddy Bill Oosterbaan wasn’t a complete washout.

For that matter, storms did finally fire in eastern Iowa, and while Bill and I were too late to catch the big mutha that slammed Prairie du Chien (Ben Holcomb, if you happen to read this, great job on tracking that beast into the hills and jungles of Wisconsin!), we did manage to latch onto the one that followed in its footsteps. But I’m no fan of night time chasing and neither is Bill, and knowing the kind of topography that lay to our east once we crossed the river, we dropped our chase at Prairie du Chien and found ourselves a hotel.

After a decent breakfast yesterday morning, we were on the road by noon and headed south. The SPC showed a moderate risk for a large area extending from Iowa and Missouri east across the corn belt and Great Lakes. With a continuation of yesterday’s huge CAPE and good bulk shear, a widespread severe weather outbreak seemed like a sure bet. However, veering surface winds and unidirectional flow seemed to put the kibosh on chances for tornadoes in all but a few areas to the east, where helicities improved, particularly around 21Z.

As we approached Davenport, Iowa, heading south, we could see towers muscling up along an east-west boundary that transected Illinois south of the I-80 corridor. Catching I-80 east, we could see new cells firing up farther to the south on GR3. With a Kankakee target in the back of our minds, we decided to drop toward Normal on I-39.

By the time we drew near the town, the northernmost storm was showing rotation on the radar. The tower was just to our west, and as we proceeded down the highway, the updraft base came into view, dominated by a well-developed wall cloud.

Wall cloud on northernmost storm.

Wall cloud on northernmost storm.

We headed for an intercept, tracking with the storm until it began to degrade. Meanwhile, another cell to the south was strengthening and beginning to exhibit distinct rotation on SRV, so with the storm we were on mushing out, we abandoned it in favor of the second, rapidly intensifying supercell.

One heckuva hail shaft or what?

One heckuva hail shaft or what?

This bad boy had an impressive hail shaft, if hail is what we were actually seeing. Maybe it was just plain old rain with a bit of hail mixed in. The reason I wonder is because of the paucity of hail reports. We got tapped a bit as we closed in, but mostly we just encountered buckets of rain. Whatever the case, the updraft tower with the sunlit precip column was a beautiful sight.

Second storm showing hail shaft and updraft tower.

Second storm showing sunlit precip core and updraft tower.

After working our way south of the storm’s rear flank, we proceeded east and finally gained some good, clear views of the business end. Tracking with it from near Urbana through Homer, Fairmount, and Westville toward the Indiana border, we were in a good position to enjoy the structure as the storm went through several cycles.

Rotating wall cloud.

Rotating wall cloud.

Just east of Homer, the wall cloud tightened and I could see rapidly circulating cloud tags descending toward the ground. We pulled over to watch. The rotation wasn’t far away–maybe a quarter of a mile–and it appeared to be moving toward us. This was strange as we were southwest of the wall cloud, but you can’t argue with a developing tornado. With the updraft approaching to within a couple hundred yards of us, Bill seemed intent on analyzing why the storm was acting so peculiarly, while I favored beating a hasty retreat and working out the behavioral aspects of storm circulation from a somewhat greater distance. Storm chasing sure has its interesting moments.

No tornado materialized, the storm headed east, and we continued on with it. I noticed a couple of tornado reports from around Fairmount and Westville, but while I suppose it’s possible that there was a brief spinup or two, Bill and I never saw an actual tornado. We did witness a few times when the wall cloud began to torque  pretty intensely, and I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be directly below it.

The whitish wall cloud is half a mile from us and rotating vigorously.

The whitish wall cloud is half a mile from us and rotating vigorously.

Possibly a funnel cloud at this point.

Possibly a funnel cloud at this point.

But from the time we first intercepted it to the point where it finally began to fizzle 120 miles later west of Crawfordsville, Indiana, the storm was outflow-dominant. Never once did we enounter surface inflow, though above ground level, I’m sure inflow was strong. In Bill’s words, the circulation kept reaching toward the ground, looking for something to grab onto, but it never could manage to root and produce a tornado. If we’d had backing winds…if the helicities had been there…I’m sure the storm would have been a potent tornado breeder. It never got its act together in that regard, but I doubt the communities in its path felt terribly disappointed, and from my perspective, the storm provided an interesting chase with some very nice moments.

Last gasp: wall cloud at US 41 west of Crawfordsville, Indiana, shortly before the storm began to collapse.

Last gasp: wall cloud at US 41 west of Crawfordsville, Indiana, shortly before the storm began to collapse.

For sheer structure, the “Danville supercell” was interesting and photogenic, with some nice RFD slots wrapping in, and, toward the end of the storm’s career, with a classic, stack-of-plates mesocyclone that was as nice as anything I’ve ever seen. (Sorry, no photos–the ones I have didn’t turn out well.)

One downside to this chase–and it is a big one–is that somewhere between Homer and US 41, I lost my camcorder. It wasn’t a pricey camcorder; it was a used Sony that I bought from my friend and fellow storm chaser Kurt Hulst. But it has done me good service over the past year, and I hate to think that it is presently sitting out there by the side of some Illinois backroad. What’s even worse is, my video of this chase is in it.

The drive back to Grand Rapids was a long one. I arrived at my apartment around 2:30 a.m. and collapsed. The chase was fun and I think I needed it, but it’s good to be back home with the love of my life, Lisa, whose bright eyes and beautiful smile warm my heart wherever I travel.

May 13 Tornado in Northern Missouri

Updraft Base

Updraft Base

This is the view that met us as we pulled off the road a couple miles north of Edina, Missouri, yesterday evening. “We” were Bill Oosterbaan, Derek Mohr, and me, and what we were looking at was the only supercell in Missouri on Wednesday, May 13, to produce a tornado–this despite a sizeable moderate risk that swept across most of Illinois and Missouri all the way down to Kansas and Oklahoma.

The storm was showing strong rotation, and had already put down a damaging tornado twenty miles to our west in Kirksville. We lost Internet connection as we approached the storm, but our last scan showed what appeared to be a storm merger with two distinct areas of rotation. The radar didn’t lie, and the proof of it provided an interesting scenario.

Wall Cloud Forming

Wall Cloud Forming

In the second image, you can see a ragged patch of scud ascending to the right and in front of the lowering in the background. This is the beginnings of what became an impressive wall cloud. Within a couple of minutes, the scud had matured into this…

Wall Cloud

Wall Cloud

The tail cloud to the right continued to grow to an astonishing length, displaying vigorous motion, feathering in rapidly toward the updraft. Meanwhile, a rain curtain began to wrap in from the south behind the wall cloud. This suggested a second mesocyclone following in the wake of the first area of rotation. I commented on this in the video I took of the storm, and my hunch soon proved true.

As the storm drew nearer, another prominent lowering began to emerge. It was exhibiting rapid motion, moreso than the more visually interesting wall cloud in the foreground. A tornado appeared immanent within this broad rotation, and in another minute multiple vortices were square dancing in the distance. One vortex soon tightened up and became dominant, fattening up into a nice hose. But the rain bands were starting to conceal the tornadic activity, and in a bit it was hard to tell exactly what was happening.

The storm quickly evolved into a nasty high precipitation beast, and from then on any tornadoes were effectively cloaked in rain.

Sorry, no stills of a well-formed tornado–I had set my camera down in favor of my video recorder–but I did manage to capture what looks to have been the beginnings of the multiple vortex phase.

Multiple Vortex Tornado

Multiple Vortex Tornado

No, you can’t see any visible touchdown in the photo, so maybe the circulation wasn’t tornadic at that moment.  If not, it was shortly after. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be standing underneath it.

After the chase, Bill dropped Derek and me off where we had left our cars at the K-Mart in Springfield, Illinois. Then the three of us headed off in our respective directions–Bill toward Corydon, Indiana; Derek toward northern Michigan; and I back toward Grand Rapids. On my way home, I picked up fellow Michigan chasers Mike Kovalchick and Mike Bishop. They had experienced an automotive failure that took them out of the chase, forcing them to ditch their vehicle in Lincoln–truly a bummer. It was great to reconnect with Mike Kovalchick, and to meet Mike Bishop for the first time. Having a couple fellow storm chasers in the car sure made the long trip home seem shorter.

The day out chasing did me a world of good, but I need a good night’s sleep, and I have work to do tomorrow. By the time the next round of weather arrives, though, I should be primed and ready to go.