When the convective line ahead of today's cold front showed up over 3 hours earlier than local models had forecast - and since the SPC had issued a tornado watch for our region - I made a quick decision to head out early and plowed westward toward Culpeper. The approaching line beat me to it so I pulled off Rte 3 west at Lignum just before the rain started. My location is marked with the purple cross on this radar depiction:
This photo was taken within 4 minutes of the above radar frame, looking northward:
I was a bit concerned that there was no lightning accompanying this potentially severe line, meaning the cells hadn't developed tall or strong enough updrafts to achieve
charge separation given the very small amount of available instability. (Besides not seeing any lightning or hearing thunder I employed my low-tech lightning detector...the chasemobile's AM radio. No static discharges = no lightning anywhere near) That's not a good sign if one is interested in chasing severe storms.
As the most interesting part of the line headed north of the Rappahannock river I was left to retreat eastward along Rte 3, stopping briefly in Fredericksburg and then trying to get back in front of the line by motoring further east and south. Winding up in Essex county on Rte 17 I got far enough ahead of the line to enjoy roughly 45 seconds of the warm sector before the cold outflow again caught up with me. At this point the tornado watch had been called off and nothing remotely severe was likely to happen, so I snapped a few
scud photos while enjoying the outing.
1 comments:
I put a few things in my car before heading to work...just in case something locally became severe...but, being February and with a morning passage, nothing noteworthy rolled through. Timing is key for the mountains...anything less than peak heating and storms suffer. -Dave
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