Guest Blog: Storm Chaser Andrew Revering on How to Forecast Northwest Flow Events

Regarding tornado potential…with storms moving southeast or even south in some cases, you have to keep in mind that the storm-relative inflow will have to shift in order to maintain a good, dry updraft and support supercellular structure.

Welcome to the first guest post in my new, improved Stormhorn.com blog! I’m pleased to feature Andrew Revering sharing his insights on forecasting northwest flow chase scenarios. Northwest flow seldom produces severe weather; however, some noteworthy tornadoes have occurred in northwest flow. I’m delighted to have Andy share his knowledge about how to forecast the rare chaseworthy setups.

Andy is the proprietor of Convective Development, Inc., and the creator of the unique, enormously powerful F5 Data forecasting data feed and software. A meteorology student both privately and in educational institutions for his whole life, Andy has been a storm chaser for 15 years, four of which he served as a contract storm chaser for KSTP, an ABC-TV affiliate in Minneapolis. Andy started writing weather software in 1996 as a high school senior, developing such programs as AlertMe, APRWeather, WarnMe, StormGuide, AlertMe Pro, SkyConditions, and F5 Data. His current projects include F5 App, F5 Maps, and CellWarn.

During the nearly three years that I’ve used Andy’s F5 Data, I’ve been impressed not only with the power of the product, but also with the knowledge, friendliness, and helpfulness of its creator. Without further preamble, here he is, helping you to get a better handle on…

FORECASTING CHASEWORTHY NORTHWEST FLOW SCENARIOS
By Andrew Revering

The weather pattern known as northwest flow often means cold, stable air and clearing skies, since it comes in the wake of a large synoptic low that has just come through, cleaning the atmosphere of moisture and instability. However, on rare occasions northwest flow can produce very photogenic supercells and even tornadoes.

A northwest flow setup is normally undesirable for storm chasing because severe weather typically occurs in the warm sector before a synoptic system passes, with the jet coming in from the southwest. After the system passes, the shifting jet structure puts you into the northwest flow with limited moisture and instability. With desirable surface features now to your east, you will typically have scrubbed the atmosphere of any good moisture and instability, thereby preventing severe weather from occurring.

However, this is not always the case. A weak ridging pattern, for example, can also produce northwest flow, and it’s possible for weaker surface systems to traverse the flow, bringing in adequate moisture and instability to create a chaseworthy setup.

Regarding tornado potential, the concerns to look at from a forecasting perspective are the same you would consider with a typical deep trough/southwest or westerly flow scenario. Check for adequate deep shear and low-level shear (helicities, 1 km shear vectors, etcetera). You also want to look at the storm-relative inflow. However, with storms moving southeast or even south in some cases, you have to keep in mind that the storm-relative inflow will have to shift to maintain a good, dry updraft and support supercellular structure.

Keep in mind some basics. In order to sustain a single-cell or supercell structure, besides having decent deep-layer shear (40-plus knots at 6 km depth vector), you should also have the environmental wind directions blowing at an angle, with storm motion at roughly ninety degrees from the direction of the environmental winds.

For example, in a classic scenario, storms move due east, with surface winds moving from the south. This allows unstable, warm, moist air to enter the storm on the south side. The storm moves east because the upper-air steering winds are pushing it in that direction. Therefore, when the tower of the storm goes up it gets tilted downwind to the east of the updraft, and rain falls ahead of the storm.

That’s the key point here: rain falls ahead of the updraft. So when you have warm “feeder” air flowing toward the southern side of an eastbound storm, that air can enter the storm unobstructed by precipitation, thus allowing for warm, buoyant air to drive the updraft.

Conversely, if the surface winds came from the east of this same eastbound storm, you’d have storm-relative inflow at 180 degrees. This is BAD for a storm when it comes to producing a tornado, because the incoming air is encountering all of the cold outflow produced by the rain core. It cannot effectively get around this obstacle to feed the updraft. So two problems occur: 1) the warm environmental air gets blocked by the outflow; and 2) the inflow speed decreases, which in turn greatly decreases the low-level shear vector.

Think of it as an extreme. If outflow blocks the environmental winds completely you have zero knots of inflow air into the updraft, which becomes contaminated by the outflow.

In this scenario, the warm air still gets into the storm to feed it, but the storm becomes front-fed, with the warm inflow riding up over the cold outflow. It enters the storm at the mid levels, pushed there by the outflow/gust front, which creates a wedge and causes a shelf cloud to form. The storm then becomes outflow-dominant—linear, multicellular, or some other mode that is unfavorable for tornadoes.

To summarize, then, you need the environmental wind direction to be entering the storm at an angle between, say, 45 and 135 degrees of a storm’s motion to help the storm maintain a super-cellular shape (along with good deep-layer shear and other parameters).

Applying these general principles to a northwest flow event, if your storm motion is southeasterly, south-southeasterly, or southerly, you need storm-relative inflow to be west-southwesterly, westerly or possibly even easterly or east-northeasterly. Since the storm motion is usually going to be southeasterly, the westerly surface options are typically the better choice.

This seems illogical to most chasers. These are not the typical directions you would expect for good inflow; however, they can work well if you have enough instability, moisture, and other of the right ingredients.

When chasing northwest flow storms—or any storms—keep in mind that you want to be on the side of a storm where the environmental inflow is approaching the storm. In a classic setup with an eastbound storm and southerly surface winds, you would look for the updraft base on the south side of the storm (though that can vary from the southeast to southwest side of the storm as well). In a northwest flow scenario, if the surface winds are west-southwest, look for your updraft base on the west-southwest or west side of the storm if its moving south, south-southeast, or southeast. This arrangement can be disorienting to a chaser who doesn’t normally chase storms moving in these directions. In northwest flow, the south or east side of the storm will have few features and present what looks like an outflow-dominant storm, making it easy to miss the tornado on the other side.

Northwest flow storms can be good tornado producers for another reason that I haven’t mentioned yet: they typically bring in cool air in the mid levels. This cool air advection greatly increases instability provided there’s good moisture and instability at the surface. Getting the right surface conditions in place is difficult, but those conditions are the key factor in a good northwest flow setup. Surface moisture and instability combined with unusually cold temperatures in the mid levels can add up to decent instability overall.

Additionally, if the mid levels are cold enough—say, less than -16C at 500mb—you may get a ‘hybrid’ cold core setup to amplify the scenario. However it probably wouldn’t be a true cold core as defined by Jon Davies’ work, given the presence of northwest flow and the likely absence of a significant mid-level cyclone in the area.

Most northwest flow setups occur in June, July, and August, with the peak being in July. These three months account for 85 percent of northwest flow events as studied by Kelly et al, 1978. It is pretty evident that the delay in northwest flow setups during the severe season is due to the lack of adequate moisture in earlier months. In the summer you can get an adundance of moisture that lingers after the passage of a system, allowing for a northwest flow system or even a post-frontal storm or two.

Storm chasers often ignore northwest flow patterns because they typically mean few low pressure centers for convergence and moisture fetch. But while severe weather is rare with northwest flow, it can occur. So keep an eye out. You can easily miss a decent chase scenario by writing it off too quickly.

August 28, 2009 by
Filed Under: Guest Posts and Interviews, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rotten Nice Weather We’re Having

Boy, is it ever summer. The day has dawned a glorious blue, with nothing in the way of convective mayhem in sight anywhere in the nation. Nothing but pop-up thunderstorms on the menu for today here in Michigan, and the 500 mb jet is like a limbo bar raised high enough for most of the CONUS to squeeze under.

SummerPattern

It’s what you expect this time of year, and it’s what we’re getting. The SPC’s long-range outlook is calling for possible troughing by the weekend, so maybe we’ll see a round of severe weather yet. Who knows. But I’m not making any plans. This is August. Might as well be January so we can get winter over and done with, except…well, there’s still always hope this time of year, and the late season to look forward to.

So why am I writing when there’s nothing to write about? Just to wish you a nice day. Enjoy this beautiful weather we’re having here, cuss the luck.

August 25, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , ,

August 20 Tornadoes in Canada

Yesterday’s storms marched across West Michigan pretty uneventfully, but as they moved east, they grew fangs. Moving into better helicity and shear, they began to develop supercellular characteristics from around Saginaw down into Ohio. It was interesting to track them on the radar, but I had no idea what was coming as they moved into Canada.

KDTX showed some small but nicely shaped and very suspect-looking cells moving out over Lake Huron. Evidently a few of them meant business. Tornadoes began dropping in Ontario, with the area around Toronto getting slammed, and with one fatality recorded in the town of Durham.

Here’s a video of the strong tornado that hit Vaughan, just north of Toronto. Looks like the person who posted on YouTube lifted the footage off of the news. I looked for other footage, but while there’s plenty out there, much of it isn’t of very good quality. This is some of the best I could find. There is presently one pretty dramatic, close-range clip of the Durham tornado which a young woman shot with the video cam on her cell phone, but I’m not confident that the link will last very long. Maybe this one won’t either, but I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it does.

August 21, 2009 by
Filed Under: Tornadoes, Video, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The 2009 Storm Season: A Good One or a Bad One?

Reading a thread in Stormtrack, I came upon a comment in which the poster briefly griped about how the 2009 storm chasing season had been a lousy one for him. In the post that followed, another member mentioned that it wasn’t fair to blame the weather for one’s personal lack of scalps when the season itself had been pretty solid. The context was lighthearted, though I read enough pointedness to the second comment that it made me stop and think.

The first commenter never said there weren’t plenty of tornadoes; he just said that he’d had a lousy season. My own season hasn’t been that hot either. For the thousands of miles I’ve driven, I’ve only got one tornado to show for it–at least, one that I’m certain of. Sure, I’ve witnessed some beautiful structure and gotten beaned by some big hail in northwest Missouri, but this year has been nothing like 2008.

Am I blaming the weather? No. Those who were in a position to chase all the slight risk day in the Great Plains, from the southern plains to the Canadian border, had plenty of opportunities and did great. But me, I live in Michigan. Much as I’d like to be out there chasing slight risk days in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and the Dakotas, logistically it’s just not feasible for me to do so. I’ve got a livelihood to earn, and gas and lodging cost money.

Add to that the fact that I made at least one poor judgment call that took me and my buddy south when we should have gone north, and I’ve had what amounts to a mediocre to poor storm chasing season. If I lived in the heart of Tornado Alley, I think I’d have enjoyed a much better one. But where I live, I have things to factor into my chase/don’t chase decisions that wouldn’t be as much of a concern if I lived in, say, Oklahoma City or Topeka, Kansas.

That’s not the weather’s fault. It’s just a matter of geography and personal circumstances. If I were to blame the weather for anything, it would be for putting in a substandard performance so far in the central Great Lakes, an area that never fares as well as the plains states to begin with. But of course, it’s pointless to blame the weather for anything, period. Weather isn’t an ethical entity–it just does what it does, and those of us who chase after it have to make our judgment calls the best we know how.

Living in Michigan, I’d be a fool to go after synoptic setups that I’d be an equal fool to pass up if I lived in Kansas instead. That’s the reality, at least for me, though I think I’m by no means alone.

So no, this hasn’t been a bad season for chase weather, not at all. But if you’re me, it hasn’t been a very good season for getting to much of the action.

Maybe the secondary season this fall will create a few more opportunities. I hope so. Give me another setup like October 18, 2007, and I’ll be a happy man.

August 15, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

August Lightning

Kurt Hulst and I got together to chase a little lightning last Sunday, August 9.  With dewpoints in the low to mid 70s, temps in the low 90s, and CAPE around 3,000, there was plenty enough gas in the convective tank. Borderline bulk shear and unidirectional winds meant that tornadoes wouldn’t be the order du jour, but it was nice to just get out and watch some storms.

Strong thunderstorm south of Lansing.

Strong thunderstorm near Lansing.

Strangely, even though Kurt and I both knew that it probably didn’t make much difference where we went, north or south–there were a lot of storms to choose from–we had a hard time choosing where we wanted to go. I guess there’s always something that lurks in the back of my head that thinks, I know there won’t be any tornadoes, but just in case, where would one be likeliest to form? It’s dumb, but it’s what goes on in my head and probably what goes on in Kurt’s too, and it tends to needlessly complicate simple choices.

Anyway, we opted to head north and wound up near Saint Johns, where we parked and let a gust front munch us with high winds, spotty but heavy rain, and infrequent lightning.

A lightning bolt strikes outside of Saint Johns, Michigan.

A lightning bolt strikes outside of Saint Johns, Michigan.

Evening colors tinge receding storm clouds.

Evening colors tinge receding storm clouds.

Afterward, we dropped south on I-69 to Charlotte and caught another cell moving in. Kurt got at least one nice lightning shot. I didn’t get anything at that location, but I didn’t mind. The sunset was extraordinarily beautiful, with melon-colored light filtering through wandering rainshafts and turning the sky to a patchwork of clouds, some catching the sunset rays and others concealing them, like a wardrobe filled with glowing garments and gray rags.

Later that night, a second batch of storms blew through Caledonia, and these ones were most sincere. The lightning was nonstop, but the time was late, I was in bed, and I decided to forgo trying to shoot lightning from my balcony and simply lie there and enjoy the show.

August 11, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Nature, Outdoors, Photography, Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , ,

“Will I Ever Become a Good Jazz Improviser?”

What does it take to become proficient at improvising jazz? Will I ever become a decent player?

Have such thoughts ever nagged at you? Perhaps you’re at the stage where you’ve acquired a decent technique, but you’re uncertain how turn it into flowing, musically cohesive improvisations. Will you ever be able to make the leap between mere good chops and great jazz solos?

Or maybe you’ve been playing the sax for a while and you think you’re making strides. Then you come across a YouTube video of some young firebrand who’s blowing circles around anything you ever dreamed of playing, and your heart sags. At that point, you think one of two things: What am I wasting my time for? or I can be that good too if I work at it.

Depression or determination. I’ve felt both emotions at different times. When I was 26 years old, I took a year of music at Wayne State University in Detroit. During my time there, living on campus, I made arrangements to practice after hours in the music building, where I normally woodshedded from 9:00 p.m. to as late as 3:00 in the morning. I worked hard, doing scale exercises, running patterns, and memorizing solos from the famous Charlie Parker Omnibook.

One evening I walked into the building early and heard sounds of music drifting from the auditorium, where one of Detroit’s high school jazz bands was playing a concert. I listened for a bit. They sounded pretty good! But I had work to do, so I broke away and headed for one of the empty classrooms, which I preferred over the smaller practice rooms. Then I assembled my horn and began to work on one of the Omnibook transcriptions I was memorizing.

A few minutes later, several of the high school band members walked into the room. The concert had ended, and they had heard me playing down the hall and decided to get an earful. Cool. I didn’t mind if they hung out and listened. I chatted with them a bit, and then the bass player said, “Hey, we gotta get James.” The other guys agreed that James definitely needed to be gotten, and one of them left to look for him.

I continued to work on my Bird transcription. Pretty soon, in walked a fourteen-year-old kid with a tenor sax tucked under his arm. He listened to me for a minute, then said, “Oh, ‘Ornithology.'” He put his horn to his mouth and started to rip through the Parker solo from memory as flawlessly as if his genetic makeup included an ‘Ornithology’ chromosome. Then, having demonstrated his mastery of a solo that I was only beginning to get my arms around, the kid proceeded to double-tongue a chromatic scale up into his horn’s altissimo register, high enough to sterilize the flies in the room.

I wanted to slap him.

The kid went on to tell me how he planned to master not just the saxophone, but all of the woodwind instruments. Whether he has entirely fulfilled that lofty ambition in the years since, I can’t say, but I do know that today, jazz virtuoso James Carter plays a large number of the woodwind family in addition to the tenor sax.

Fellow saxophonist Tom Stansell, whose family owns and operates the celebrated Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Muskegon, where Carter spent a summer as a student years ago, once commented, “No one ever told the kid that it’s hard to play fast.”

As for me, I just kept plugging away at my saxophone. My journey as a musician hasn’t taken me to New York at age 21 or on international tours. Rather, it has placed me in Caledonia playing for cows in the pasture at the west edge of town and taking gigs as they come, which they seem to be doing more and more of lately.

And they should be. Because while I’m no James Carter, I’m a good sax player. I’ve been told on different occasions that I don’t realize how good I really am, and maybe that’s true. I hope so. Coming from capable musicians, compliments like that certainly encourage me, because I’ve worked hard to bring together all the technical stuff–the scales, arpeggios, patterns, solo transcriptions, and everything else I’ve labored at over many years–into something that sounds interesting, original, personal, passionate, and…well, musical.

I hadn’t initially planned to share the above anecdote, but there’s a point to it: discouragement and inspiration often come from the same source, and they’re just a matter of how you look at things. Maybe you’re not playing the way you wish you could play today. But if you stick with it, one day you’ll look back and realize how far you’ve come. The technique that you’re presently unsure what to do with will have become your servant, the building material of ideas which you spin with confidence and ease out of your horn. You may not be the next Michael Brecker–or maybe you will be–but that’s not what it’s about. Do what you do for the love of what you do, and everything else will follow in its time.

Not all of us have the same advantages. Not all of us grew up in musical families or were steeped in jazz at an early age. Not all of us have the same natural aptitude, the same educational opportunities, or the same life circumstances that permit us to practice as much as we’d like. But all of us have the ability to choose whether to persevere or give up. So…

“Will I ever become a good jazz improviser?”

If you quit, the answer is no.

If you keep at it, studying the music, listening to great players, and practicing diligently and consistently, the answer is yes.

Don’t rob yourself of the joy of playing music worth hearing. Don’t deprive the world around you of the pleasure of hearing you. And don’t belittle the talent God gave you, because into that talent is woven a purpose that is higher than you may imagine.

Stay with it. You’ll be glad you did.

August 5, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Life, Music, Nature, Saxophone, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Year of the Cap Bust

I guess I’m just a slow learner when it comes to technical stuff that involves linear thinking. Sooner or later, though, if I stick with something long enough, I usually emerge more knowledgeable for having done so. Nowhere has this been more true than in storm chasing, an activity which obviously depends heavily on figuring out if and where there will be decent storms to chase.

Seems like I’m constantly being confronted with some new aspect of the atmosphere that I haven’t factored into my forecasting, or that I haven’t factored in as effectively as I needed to. The upside of that, though, is that I wouldn’t even be aware of what I don’t know if I hadn’t learned enough to at least recognize my areas of ignorance. If my forecasts aren’t as expert as those of a trained meteorologist, they’re nonetheless a seven-league bound beyond when I was just beginning to grapple with all those arcane terms and acronyms of convective weather such as SBCAPE, CIN, 0-6km bulk shear, LIs, helicity, and lapse rates, and when the only thing I could do with a skew-T or a hodograph was shake my head in bewilderment.

This has been the year of discovering the 700 mb/12C limit. By “discovering,” I mean through empirical experience, and by “empirical experience,” I mean cap busts. Of course, I’ve endured plenty of cap busts in my development as a storm chaser; I just didn’t understand exactly what was going on, or why the high risk area I was sitting in was producing nothing more than smug blue skies rather than carnivorous supercells.

One memorable day in Iowa drove home the lesson perfectly. MLCIN was supposed to erode by later in the afternoon, and it got to a point where it was eroding, at least according the RUC. With SBCAPE at some ridiculous figure like 7,000 j/kg, I figured that at some point a convective tower would punch through the cap and go absolutely gonzo. Instead, the clouds kept firing up into the nicely sheared environment and then dying, firing and dying, firing and dying. The reason? A 700 mb temperature of around 14C, possibly considerably higher. Lesson learned: it doesn’t much matter what the models have to say about the CIN eroding when you’ve got mid-level temperatures like that.

I experienced another cap bust yesterday, though I can’t feel too bad about it since I had no compelling reason to head out in the first place, the conditions were so marginal. It was interesting to notice that in this situation, the circumstances were reversed: RUC showing my area under very breakable 700 mb temps of around 10C, but with MLCIN creating some concern. However, the CIN appeared to be eroding, and when an SPC mesoscale discussion spotlighted the area I was in, I started feeling happy about having made the drive down to west-central Illinois.

But the CIN started building back in, and by 00Z I found myself socked in under values around -300 j/kg. Not much a parcel of air can do with that, I guess, no matter how big the CAPE is. I turned around and headed home.

A paper by Bunker, Wetencamp, and Schild of the NWS in Rapid City, South Dakota, explores the ins and outs of the 700 mb/12C limit and concludes that it has a limited, conditional application. However, as my buddy Mike Kovalchick pointed out to me, the paper also reveals that only 5 percent of tornadoes within the study period formed when H7 temps exceeded 12C, and virtually no violent (EF4 and EF5) tornadoes occurred above that threshold.

So for practical use in storm chasing, the 12C limit appears to be a very useful rule of thumb. The issue for me then becomes a matter of refining my ability to know when cold air advection will lower the 700 mb temps. But that’s a subject for another blog. I’m tired of thinking. It’s time to go meet my buddy Dewey down in Plainwell and grab a brew at Arie’s. Ciao!

August 4, 2009 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Jazz, Music, Nature, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Changes Coming to Stormhorn Blog

Greetings, friends and readers of Stormhorn.com!

I want to fill you in on some changes that are in the works for this blog. They’re not here yet, but they are impending, and I anticipate that they will help take the blog, and eventually its parent Stormhorn website, to the next level.

At the moment, the most significant change in the works is a brand-new, custom theme. My lady friend, Lisa, who is absolutely brilliant at website development, online marketing, and all things computer, has been beavering away steadily at the new version. When it is done, this blog will have a new look and much greater versatility. I’m excited about what Lisa has got planned, and I can’t wait to roll it out once it’s ready, see how you like it, and get your feedback.

Concurrent with the new theme, I’ve been thinking about adding an extra element of interest by featuring guest bloggers from time to time. They will be from the worlds of both music and storm chasing. I like the idea of offering you insights and perspectives besides just my own, and I hope that doing so will provide an added value for my readers as well as a positive experience for my contributors.

About my Jazz Improvisation E-BooK: While this project has been on the back burner for a while, I do anticipate picking it back up at some point. I’ve already got several installments written; however,  because I tend to be pretty thorough, each lesson takes me considerable time to develop, and with other more pressing matters to deal with, I just haven’t had time or focus for the e-book. Stay tuned, though, because it is by no means a dead project. As this blog and website continue to develop step by step, I will at some point get the e-book back on track.

So, there you have it: changes are coming to Stormhorn.com, and the first of them is right around the corner. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to post with the existing format, which has served me well thus far. I hope you’ve enjoyed your visits here, and that you’ll enjoy them even more as this blog enters an exciting new phase.

July 28, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Life, Music, Nature, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A Stormy Friday in Grand Rapids?

Out of idle curiosity, I ran the latest GFS and came up with the image below. The colored shading is 500 mb winds, and the contours are CAPE. Not shown: H7 temps of 4 C throughout Michigan, 50-60 kt bulk shear, and dewpoints in the mid-60s.

GFS for 00Z Friday evening, July 24.

GFS for 00Z Friday evening, July 24.

CAPE stinks, but I’ve got to love that jet streak parked right over Grand Rapids. Without decent convective energy, this setup is hard to get too hopped up about, but it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on. Probably a pipe dream in July, but in this part of the country you just never know.

July 20, 2009 by
Filed Under: Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , ,

Cool-Weather Wall Clouds

So there I was, driving down I-96 toward my mother and sister’s house in Grand Rapids this afternoon, when I saw what at first glance looked like a wall cloud. It looked like one at second glance, too, and third, hanging off of a cumulus tower in the distance.

Severe weather wasn’t in the outlook today, and in fact, the afternoon was coolish and not particularly moist, with spotty showers but no thunder or lightning. I was unaware of any reason to be on the lookout for abnormal weather, though the extent of the vertical development in the cumulus clouds coupled with their nicely sheared look would have been a tip-off under more propitious circumstances.

Anyway, I was intrigued by the cloud formation, but not quite prepared to call it anything more than a lowering at that point. It was falling apart over Grand Rapids by the time I turned north onto the East Beltline. But the show was far from over. Another large towering cumulus several miles to my northwest was exhibiting an even larger, blocky lowering which wasn’t showing any signs of dissipating.

That did it. It was time to get close enough to this thing to see just exactly what it was. This was a simple matter. The cloud was drifting quite slowly, and intercepting it involved nothing more elaborate than continuing north up the Beltline past 7 Mile Road, then pulling into a small turn-in, where I had an unobstructed view from maybe half a mile away.

The cloud was indeed a wall cloud. I could see a weak updraft dragging scud up into it, and even a hint of an RFD. More important, the cloud was circulating–very slowly, to be sure, but unmistakably. As it moved closer, I even observed a small, anticyclonic vortex spinning almost directly overhead. There was obviously enough shear and helicity in the atmosphere to create some interest, and I had a nice front-row seat. Just wish I’d had my camera with me, but as I said, I wasn’t expecting anything weatherwise today that would have made me think to grab it.

What I was seeing struck me as more fascinating than threatening, but I decided to call KGRR and report it anyway, just for the record. The met who took my information said he wasn’t surprised. He told me that the office had already received several reports of waterspouts out on Lake Michigan, plus other reports of funnel clouds. Sounded like a cold air funnel outbreak.

My buddy Kurt Hulst called later to tell me that he, too, had seen a wall cloud over Caledonia from where he lives in Kentwood. If I’d been home, it would have been a front door delivery, but of course I wasn’t. Seems to me, though, that Kurt said he got some photos. I hope so, because I’d like to see what I missed.

Days like today just go to show that the weather does what it wants, when it wants. Maybe the local WFO will offer an analysis of today’s conditions. That would be cool.

Lesson learned: take my camera with me wherever I go.

July 19, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Nature, Outdoors, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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