25 August Hot day chase

On what may be the last truly hot day of the summer the Blue Ridge “lee trough” set up over the Piedmont and storms fired near the mountains and headed northeastward. I left home at 2030 UT for the Bealeton area to intercept a line that was showing tops over 50,000’ and wound up in a farm field 1 mile west of Remington watching as the “tail end Charlie” storm approached. The storm itself was impressive, with lots and lots of blinding CGs (top photo) and outflow winds that I estimated at 35 knots. Doppler indicated some rotation on this cell before I left to go southeast several miles to get out of the rain shaft. Once I repositioned I found myself under the back edge of the storm watching some features trying to wrap up into a mesocyclone (bottom photo) literally over my head. As the line marched off to the northeast into undesirable traffic and road conditions I headed home, arriving at 2315. Another fun chase!

Cold Air Damming....in August???!!!!

Today's setup looked a lot more like April than August here in the Mid-Atlantic, with a low cloud deck hanging tough east of the Blue Ridge and north of I-64 accompanied by cool moist maritime air and northeasterly winds. (In the satellite view above the Blue Ridge is delineated by the blue line and the southern extent of the maritime layer is marked by the yellow line.) This while just a few miles away the Shenandoah Valley and southern Virginia baked in the summertime heat and humidity. When the remnants of TS Erin slammed into the juicy airmass most of Virginia wound up under either an MD or severe thunderstorm watch. Note that I said "most" of Virginia; we here in the forlorn north are still stuck under low grey ceilings with little or no instability. Oh well, I shouldn't complain since we had a series of thunderstorms train over us last night, dumping nearly 2" of badly needed rain and treating us to a spectacular lightning show. During most of the performance we were averaging a flash every 2 seconds or so...not quite continuous, but almost. This plus several radar-indicated mesocyclones in the vicinity was enough to keep my interest for several hours, but I didn't chase due to the darkness and the low cloud deck rendering visibilities in the atrocious range.

Trolling for Supercells in Virginia

I really didn’t want to chase yesterday...I’d had a busy week and was weary. However when supercells come calling in Virginia I can’t ignore them, and that’s what happened. When I got home from work I noticed a couple of good-looking cells just to the west of the Blue Ridge. Checking the SPC composite indices I saw that the area into which these cells were headed had a supercell composite of 12 (a value greater than one is considered good for us)!!! I finally gave in and called my son, finding out he had been in bed sick all day. He dragged himself out (he couldn’t refuse the conditions either) and we headed west at 2100 UT for Orange county to get ahead of and possibly south of the building complex. Of course we had dallied 15 minutes longer than we should have, plus the eastward-headed leading cell took a right turn toward the southeast. The upshot was that we wound up in a losing battle trying to get south of the storm which at times showed tops over 50,000 feet, a VIL of 87, and generated reports of 70+mph winds and 2” diameter hail. We stopped briefly in Mineral and snapped some photos amid the incredible lightning, watching wall cloud remnants approach (see photo). Given the afore-mentioned conditions I was too chicken to core punch the storm (something about high winds and large hail coupled with a narrow tree-lined two lane country road doesn’t appeal to me), so we headed southeast on State Route 33 rather than following Route 522 south into the core. After stopping briefly to snap a picture or two of the leading edge of the by-now MCS we wound up in the town of Montpelier, huddling under a convenient car shelter displayed in front of a hardware store. Since the enormous hail shaft passed by just to our southwest we didn’t see any stones but we were treated to an eye-watering CG display. After the worst had passed we headed east to Ashland where we grabbed some dinner before heading home, arriving tired but gratified we made the effort.

Productive West Virginia trip

Altho’ this wasn’t really a chase I was in Morgantown on a business trip. I had left behind the 100⁰-plus heat of the Virginia Piedmont and found rain and storms in the highlands of West Virginia. As I headed back to the motel at 2100 UT on August 9th I was racing (and beat) a storm coming in from the northwest. The hotel was situated on a hilltop and I was able to watch as CGs stabbed down all around on nearby hilltops. I tried to time the shutter to capture one of these magnificent bolts (first photo) but was unsuccessful, retreating inside as the rain approached. Radar indicated a mesocylone just north of my location, but I didn’t see any features.

After dinner in the hotel restaurant I went outside to stretch my legs and call my wife. As I wandered around the hilltop a little after 2330 UT I heard thunder again in the northwest, so I quickly returned to my room and grabbed my camera to capture storm #2. It had what looked to be a roll cloud out ahead of it, but given the altitude I was at it looked like a fog bank building up like a wave to break over us (second photo). As it approached with thunder rumbling behind it I continued to snap pictures as it swallowed up the vista, eventually socking in my position as well. The fog swept through quickly, leaving the remainder of the storm to follow in its wake.

Barely 30 minutes later I heard yet more thunder and once again grabbed my camera and headed outside to photograph storm #3. It exhibited an interesting feature as it approached from the northwest (third photo) but nothing exciting came of it. After the leading edge of rain had passed I noticed significant amounts of scud building to my southeast. All of it seemed to be rising toward the cloud deck, but I didn’t see anything other than more rain and lightning. All in all a very productive spot chase!!

5 August chase

Under a slight risk Sunday with the setup looking okay to the east I headed out at 1900 UT to pick up my son and move southeast to Port Royal. The overall atmosphere was very hazy and/or overcast…we couldn’t tell the difference, but we still couldn’t see much. My son's cellphone internet link allowed us to track the developing convection and (after a very unpleasant encounter with a horrible odor in a parking lot at Port Royal) we decided to move further south and east to intercept a northeastward moving cell in King & Queen county. We actually found a couple of good vantage points amid the everpresent treelines and watched as CG’s sizzled down around us. We sat still for a static core punch and held on while the rain came in sideways with 35 knot gusts (photo). We couldn’t see many features due to the dog days haze, but we chalked up another enjoyable outing.