Worn Out But Still Going

[stevestorms]

Hi its been a mad last few days huge storms and the nastiest of them was today a massive line of severe storms from Kansas into South Decota and we ran from the top down the east side today getting MUNCHED a few times in South Decota if you have been watching our APRS signal you would have seen how close we were to these Dangerous storms, they were impossible huge rain factorys huge winds and boy they were moving!!! at one time one indicated 76mph even the SPC at one point had them at 50MPH NE, Scariest moment was near Ironicly the town of Norfolk in Nebraska we came to a T junction after runnng from a dust storm kicked up by the straight line winds it was less than half a mile behind us we could go south or north NO EAST AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! before we could do anything WAMMMO!!! 60MPH RAIN INTO THE BACK OF OUR VAN, completely blinded we limped across the road to a farm and hid up round the back with another motorist the wind increased and so did the rain, it was like a hurricane and we were stuck BARON then indicated 2 circulations one right on us "OH THANKS" I said, its like being a bunny in a locked in a hutch and the big nasty storm is coming to shake us about, all I wanted to do was get out into the clear air the rain started shifting directions over the farm ooooooh bugger! I thought just to speed my heart rate up over 200bpm! the rain finaly eased and we took the chance to shoot south 2 miles then East to try and out run this endless line and guess what more trouble! a few miles up the road the line was catching us and I was trying, I am a Paramedic and I can drive fast and this bugger was kicking up another dust storm to our west and boy was it moving, we could see the clear air ahead I was doing 85mph in the wind and rain ahead our exit was being cut of by a rapid moving 100ft high dust storm with I guess less than 500meters to go it struck us in the side with a monster thump! car shifted at least 5 feet across the road sideways, I recon over 70mph winds we lost 3 arials of the car which all blew off there mag mounts! one is still damaged and bent, pieces of wood and dirt tumble weeds and all sorts were hitting us as I pushed through to saftey PHEW!!! what a day over 500miles of Adrenaline, one attached pic im tired.

Edited May 24, 2006 by stevestorms

[crimsone]

Sounds like fun and fear - a good days chasing

Glad you came out the otherside OK.

[fuzion]

souds intense

if not a little scary

[sconetone]

But at least it was mild...

Glad you got through it safely!

[kold weather]

Wow, So you were moving at 85mph and the dust storm hit you with 70mph winds, did you stop as it struck or did you continue to drive?

Great picture though, could only imagine being there, sounds intense!

[Dazza]

Crumbs Steve, how exciting and nerve wrecking at the same time. I think I need a drink after reading that!

[pottyprof]

interesting stuff there steve.. glad you got through safely if not a little ruffled.. take it the laundrette made a tidy profit?

[Pale Blue Sky]

What a fantastic account! My heart was pounding just reading it!

-PBS-

[Cloudburst]

Wow thats quite exciting, i bet your glad that circulation above you didnt touch down

[*Stormforce~beka*]

What a fantastic account! My heart was pounding just reading it!

-PBS-

Mine to!! You'll never forget that as long as you live!!

[mr_crazy_snowfan]

:lol: goodness me's!!! it is sounds like bad dreams the me is has!!! u is could have died you knows. u is must comes home to safety u naughty boys out there's!

[Cakie]

Wow

That had my heart racing just reading it :lol:

Glad to hear you survived and what an account you wrote

[wolves78]

nice one steve thanks for shareing that with us look forward to more while you are out there be safe though

how long u staying for? also been keeping an eye on your APRS signal wow close call

[Paul Sherman]

Keep going Stevieboy !! See ya at that Summer Chasers BBQ. Remember this comes along just once a year so keep focused.

Paul S

[Roger J Smith]

Well, that was dramatic, but if you live here in N America as I have for 49 years (today, as it turns out), you don't necessarily need to chase storms, sooner or later they will find you. I just thought it might be interesting to recount the story of the one supercell that managed to find me (out of about ten marginal cases, this was a definite qualifier).

Friday 14 July 1995 was the hottest day of the year in Ontario, where we were living (actually starting to pack up our home for the big move west to B.C.). It was about 36 C most places, including the small town of Lakefield where we lived, about 150 km northeast of Toronto. Because the internet had not yet started up, I was doing my research mostly on the long-term statistical scale, and was not necessarily following daily weather patterns very closely. But I knew from watching the TV weather at 11 p.m. that a dry cold front was over Lake Huron, with a slight risk of thunder being predicted before it cooled off slightly for Saturday. This is quite common in the Great Lakes area, a dry cold front cooling down from the low 30s to the high 20s with less humidity.

So because it was so hot I was downstairs at 2:30 a.m. reading when I noticed some lightning on the western horizon. For a while, it amounted to little, and at that time I had no ready source of weather data or radars, so I only realized something out of the ordinary was about to happen when the thunder started to sound very loud and became continuous. About 3:00 on the button, the lightning became so frequent that it was basically daylight outside, and the thunder sounded like a freight train going by at 70 mph. The trees in our back yard (as we call gardens over here) were swaying almost all the way down to the ground and back, and rain was blowing sideways. Somehow, we missed the hail but this was definitely a supercell, winds were probably about 75 mph and the lightning and thunder just kept up more or less non-stop for twenty minutes. Rain was moderate rather than heavy, but by this time the two of us were standing by the kitchen door with the basement door open, ready to make a run if we saw the winds getting any worse. My daughter was off camping with some friends about 100 km north of our location, and she later told us they had roughly the same kind of storm there and ran for the cars, perhaps a slightly safer location than the tents.

The next morning, we heard that the storm had produced an F2 tornado in the nearby town of Bridgenorth, where it had destroyed most of a marina and then gone down the main road towards Lakefield and taken out most of the trees in front of the houses, but luckily had not damaged the houses although one person died of a heart attack. This was reported to have been at 2:50 a.m. while I was watching the lightning coming my way. So that's what happens when storms chase you, and there is nowhere to go but the basement.

Although that's the worst storm I have seen, it is only slightly worse than about half a dozen others. Some of you should consider storm chasing in Canada in the summer, both Ontario and Alberta-Saskatchewan get major severe weather, and in the case of Alberta-Saskatchewan, you get the sort of wide open country and good visibility of storms that people like in the central U.S. The height of the season in both cases is probably June to August, so you get the warmest weather, and if you were chasing storms in Alberta, you'd have the Rocky Mountains for scenery on the days when mother nature was failing to provide storms to chase. Alberta has had two major tornadoes since 1987, one in Edmonton which killed 29 people on July 31, 1987, and one that killed ten near Calgary at a campground called Pine Lake. That was on July 14, 2000. Way back in 1912 when Regina, SK was just a small town but still the provincial capital, an F4 tornado ripped through the heart of the town and killed 30 people. And just to complete the list, Manitoba's worst tornado was in 1922 and hit the town of Portage la Prairie in June, several killed there, while Ontario's worst tornado was 31 May 1985 in Barrie, north of Toronto, an F3 verified, with eight dead there, and two killed in other parts of Ontario. That one also went over my house in Peterborough near Lakefield, although in a weakened form (but still strong enough that we went down to the basement).

The worst hailstorm I have seen was way back on August 2nd, 1964, travelling east across the prairies with my parents on summer holidays. We drove into the back end of a black cloud and found out that it was dropping baseball sized hail, so we kept stopping and following along, all afternoon long finding new examples of damage that this storm had caused in small towns along the highway, broken windows and whole trees that were shredded of their leaves.

And as for heavy rain, I know you get your share in the UK, but when it rains in Ontario, it comes down like 100-200 mm an hour sometimes, so I've seen that on many occasions, and once I was at a golf course where at the end of the storm, there was generally three feet of running water all over the course. The next day, people were out playing again, so I guess the drainage system was pretty good. There was a reliable reading of 388 mm of rain at a summer resort town called Gravenhurst north of Toronto in the summer of 2001. That took about six hours to fall, from a line of stalled out thunderstorms.

[wolves78]

OMG roger thanks for that what a griping read

[Paul Sherman]

Yes got to say the Storms that kind of find you are the worst, Grand Island (Nebraska) last year was the worst for me although a few this year have run that close. The Snyder (Texas) Storm that developed a Hook echo just to our North West this year was quite frightening, the NWS Radio kept going off with new warnings of Spotters seeing Funnel Clouds to the West of Snyder and for people to take cover from the Tor Warned Storm. We were staying in a concrete built Best Western Motel but things go through your mind all the time, I even phoned Lorraine Evans (Ukww) on Ozzies Mobile as our radar link went down and she was relaying info to us from the Uk, 4am here in the Uk so fair play to her for doing that. 10th May 2005 in Nebraska was just plain crazy taking shelter under a canopy of a Shell petrol station with 90mph straight line winds from the RFD Slot, not knowing if everything was going to cave in, Coalgate and Atoka this year same as Steve just riding out the Storm and hoping the Nado does'nt take you out, also Clairmont where I got the Tornado Picture, about 30 minutes earlier we were held up by some roadworks with high banks either side of us not knowing what was coming just being pounding by rain hitting you sideways, all fun but Very dangerous.

Paul Sherman

[Coopsy]

Well, that was dramatic, but if you live here in N America as I have for 49 years (today, as it turns out), you don't necessarily need to chase storms, sooner or later they will find you. I just thought it might be interesting to recount the story of the one supercell that managed to find me (out of about ten marginal cases, this was a definite qualifier).

Friday 14 July 1995 was the hottest day of the year in Ontario, where we were living (actually starting to pack up our home for the big move west to B.C.). It was about 36 C most places, including the small town of Lakefield where we lived, about 150 km northeast of Toronto. Because the internet had not yet started up, I was doing my research mostly on the long-term statistical scale, and was not necessarily following daily weather patterns very closely. But I knew from watching the TV weather at 11 p.m. that a dry cold front was over Lake Huron, with a slight risk of thunder being predicted before it cooled off slightly for Saturday. This is quite common in the Great Lakes area, a dry cold front cooling down from the low 30s to the high 20s with less humidity.

So because it was so hot I was downstairs at 2:30 a.m. reading when I noticed some lightning on the western horizon. For a while, it amounted to little, and at that time I had no ready source of weather data or radars, so I only realized something out of the ordinary was about to happen when the thunder started to sound very loud and became continuous. About 3:00 on the button, the lightning became so frequent that it was basically daylight outside, and the thunder sounded like a freight train going by at 70 mph. The trees in our back yard (as we call gardens over here) were swaying almost all the way down to the ground and back, and rain was blowing sideways. Somehow, we missed the hail but this was definitely a supercell, winds were probably about 75 mph and the lightning and thunder just kept up more or less non-stop for twenty minutes. Rain was moderate rather than heavy, but by this time the two of us were standing by the kitchen door with the basement door open, ready to make a run if we saw the winds getting any worse. My daughter was off camping with some friends about 100 km north of our location, and she later told us they had roughly the same kind of storm there and ran for the cars, perhaps a slightly safer location than the tents.

The next morning, we heard that the storm had produced an F2 tornado in the nearby town of Bridgenorth, where it had destroyed most of a marina and then gone down the main road towards Lakefield and taken out most of the trees in front of the houses, but luckily had not damaged the houses although one person died of a heart attack. This was reported to have been at 2:50 a.m. while I was watching the lightning coming my way. So that's what happens when storms chase you, and there is nowhere to go but the basement.

Although that's the worst storm I have seen, it is only slightly worse than about half a dozen others. Some of you should consider storm chasing in Canada in the summer, both Ontario and Alberta-Saskatchewan get major severe weather, and in the case of Alberta-Saskatchewan, you get the sort of wide open country and good visibility of storms that people like in the central U.S. The height of the season in both cases is probably June to August, so you get the warmest weather, and if you were chasing storms in Alberta, you'd have the Rocky Mountains for scenery on the days when mother nature was failing to provide storms to chase. Alberta has had two major tornadoes since 1987, one in Edmonton which killed 29 people on July 31, 1987, and one that killed ten near Calgary at a campground called Pine Lake. That was on July 14, 2000. Way back in 1912 when Regina, SK was just a small town but still the provincial capital, an F4 tornado ripped through the heart of the town and killed 30 people. And just to complete the list, Manitoba's worst tornado was in 1922 and hit the town of Portage la Prairie in June, several killed there, while Ontario's worst tornado was 31 May 1985 in Barrie, north of Toronto, an F3 verified, with eight dead there, and two killed in other parts of Ontario. That one also went over my house in Peterborough near Lakefield, although in a weakened form (but still strong enough that we went down to the basement).

The worst hailstorm I have seen was way back on August 2nd, 1964, travelling east across the prairies with my parents on summer holidays. We drove into the back end of a black cloud and found out that it was dropping baseball sized hail, so we kept stopping and following along, all afternoon long finding new examples of damage that this storm had caused in small towns along the highway, broken windows and whole trees that were shredded of their leaves.

And as for heavy rain, I know you get your share in the UK, but when it rains in Ontario, it comes down like 100-200 mm an hour sometimes, so I've seen that on many occasions, and once I was at a golf course where at the end of the storm, there was generally three feet of running water all over the course. The next day, people were out playing again, so I guess the drainage system was pretty good. There was a reliable reading of 388 mm of rain at a summer resort town called Gravenhurst north of Toronto in the summer of 2001. That took about six hours to fall, from a line of stalled out thunderstorms.

I shall be making some trips out there this summer, should the chance arise at weekend, and if i do come across anything, i shall be on the weather network as i just managed to become a severe weather reporter for them. We actually had our first storm here the other night, it didnt amount to much and for most part it was a dry storm, but spectacular with the lightning over the mountains.

Although i have followed the weather for a while i never realised what vaste weather Alberta got, a much of Canada for that. Here in alberta we get snow storms, extreme thunderstorms, tornadoes, and all other sorts so we are really lucky i guess