Pre-frontal storms

Knowing that today was my only shot at chasing this week I haunted the models, radar, and observations all morning and early afternoon. A lee trough ahead of a cold front was supposed to fire some storms as the SPC had our area under a Slight Risk even tho' the overall shear values were low. Finally, after 3:00 pm, I decided that I couldn't wait any longer and pointed the chasemobile westward toward Wilderness in hopes of catching some storms firing near the mountains.
At Wilderness I stopped to check radar and found a nice looking cell southwest of the town of Orange so I headed south along Route 20. After a couple of other radar stops I finally wound up in the Unionville vicinity at the intersection of Routes 20 and 522, awaiting the approach of the slowly moving storms. Unfortunately the cells near Orange kept dying out as I sat there waiting for them, so I gave up on them and motored north on 522 toward Culpeper to intercept a cell crossing the Blue Ridge with indicated rotation. Sure enough I spied a wall cloud west of the town:
Realizing that a line was coalescing east of the mountains I found a northeast bound rural route by which to parallel the storms and keep ahead of the rain. Finally reaching a good vantage point I was able to see the wall cloud and its striated updraft now southeast of Culpeper:
I moved a couple of miles further northeast to stay ahead of most of the rain. As I watched, however, the line continued to coalesce and this cell began to produce a shelf cloud:
I now realized that the complex had me cut off from crossing the Rappahannock River via Route 29 north of Culpeper, so my only choice was to scoot southeastward along Route 3 toward Fredericksburg. I snapped this shot from a median pulloff as the storm continued north of the river:
Overall it was a decent chase with limited expectations of severity, and that's what I got. But it was a chase!!

Frontal passage with no reachable storms

With a cold frontal passage through the area early Friday afternoon I was hoping for at least one decent cell to chase. There wasn't - it all happened well to the east - but I did at least identify and track a convective line that eventually intensified over the Delmarva peninsula. I set up shop on Route 3 east of Fredericksburg to watch the line, with particular interest in the southern end:

Alas, the northern end of the line was the part that developed this time and those cells were already heading northeast and were close to crossing the Potomac River by this time. I followed the line eastward to Route 301 but threw in the towel early when nothing else developed, even after the SPC had posted a Mesoscale Discussion for all of Virginia east of the Blue Ridge. For a week that originally held at least a modicum of chasing potential the past few days have been a big disappointment.

The storm killer

At least that's what I feel like my nickname should be after the last two days of chasing. Today I even waited until a complex of cells looked decent on radar and close enough to go after:
The convective complex sprawled from Louisa county into western Spotsylvania, and the southwestern edge was continuing to punch up new cells, so I headed south to the Thornburg area where I spied a nice rain-free base at the southern end. Continuing south to a sports facility in Caroline county I stopped to watch the entire complex begin to fall apart:

The frustrating part was that the cell to my south was pounding Ashland at this time and sounding very active but I was out of position and didn't want to travel any further south and east. Within 15 minutes after this picture was taken there was literally nothing left but blue sky so I moseyed back toward home. Can't call this a B-U-S-T, but it certainly wasn't satisfying.

Lightning video from June 21 storm

This particular CG (cloud-to-ground) made me jump during yesterday's storm intercept! All the more reason I stay in the car when lightning is near.

Summer solstice chase (June 21)

Even tho' the SPC Slight Risk area barely grazed Charlottesville I decided to give chase to a nice-looking cell that moved southeasterly from the home of UVa. Radar indicated some rotation on the southeastern edge of the storm so I strove mightily to get there, rolling down Route 15 through Gordonsville and eventually south of I-64. (It was a bit out of my normal chase range but I was craving a chase given that I'd missed a few last week.) As I approached Palmyra the storm became severe-warned and my expectations ratcheted upwards despite the fact that I could see a shelf cloud but no wall cloud and experienced significant outflow winds.

Southeast of Palmyra and not too far from the metropolis of Columbia I stopped on a rural lane to watch the approach, disappointed that the overall complex had significantly weakened and looked like it was falling apart. To my delight the storm began hurling CG's as it pulsed back upward in strength and I recorded a number of them on my dashboard video, including a very close one that startled me.

After the rain started in earnest I motored back northward in hopes of getting a structure shot of the storm but was thwarted by the everpresent treelines.

Timing, timing, timing...

The Storm Prediction Center convective forecast today shows another Moderate Risk for areas out west that we chased during the May Virginia Tech storm chase trip.  Over the past week or so the storm chasing has heated up - pun intended - out west, which has led to teeth grinding sessions among both the May and June trip personnel at having missed some of the best chasing of the season.  But, as I've said on numerous occasions, storm chasing is a four-dimensional activity.  Not only does the chaser have to be in the right place on the map (x,y,z) but he/she has to be there at the right time (t) as well.  Now if I can just find a funding sponsor that would finance two or three weeks out in Tornado Alley...!!

Meanwhile I am back in place for Virginia chasing and am keeping an eye on the forecast and the radar locally.  I don't foresee a lot of severe weather this week but there will be thunderstorms that may interact with outflow boundaries and other local phenomena to increase low level shear.  I will be out looking!!

A no-chase week

There have been at least a couple of decent storms I would have chased this week, but they've all been trumped by the waiting for and subsequent celebration of the birth of our second grandson.   Some - albeit very few - things take precedence over storm chasing, and this is certainly one of them.  I'll be back in the saddle sometime soon, and there will be other storms to catch!

Saturday June 11th chase

I have been remiss at posting a chase account from Saturday but herein is a summary.   After perusing models and radar I motored toward Culpeper with the goal of being there by 2:00 pm to get set up ahead of the storms.  This turned out to not be early enough as cells were firing east of the Blue Ridge by that time and were quickly coalescing into a squall line.  The best looking storm was heading eastward near the town of Orange so I jumped south to the Lahore Road / Route 522 intersection and set up shop on a rural route near there, where I recorded this CG on my in-car videocamera:

The other noteworthy features of this cell were heavy rain and strong (~30 kt) outflow so I continued a mile further south to stay ahead of the line and recorded this awesome view of the line's approach:

Turning north on Route 208 I was stopped by road construction on the bridge crossing Lake Anna where I photographed this view of the shelf:

This video shows evidence of the strong outflow via a dust cloud crossing Route 208:

I was going to call off the chase when I reached Route 1 in Thornburg but caught sight of a lowering to the east so I continued eastward across I-95, across to Route 2, and then north to Route 17 in Spotsylvania county.  Still glimpsing the lowering I charged eastward down Route 17 to Port Royal but never did get another good look at the lowering thanks to tree lines and hills.  At that point the cell just to my north was severe-warned and was pounding King George county with hail reported up to 1.75" size but I called off the chase at that point and headed homeward.

Maybe a Saturday chase?

Yesterday's chase potential was significantly reduced once a backdoor front slid into the eastern half of Virginia during the early afternoon.  Temperatures and instability both fell and shoved the convective potential to the Blue Ridge and points westward.  The cells that fired there did so under conditions that weren't dynamic enough to entice me to travel toward Charlottesville for slow moving heavy rainers/hailers, altho' from radar indications I felt at least one cell just north of that city probably had a decent wall cloud under it.

Today looks a bit better for chaseable storms even tho' the overall shear isn't impressive.  A lee trough should trigger convection further north and east and I'm counting on leftover outflow boundaries to provide a bit of low-level shear to help with storm development.  We'll see how it all develops and whether I chase today.

Next chance for storms is Friday, and updated info on VT Meteorology program

The MCS that swept through West Virginia and Kentucky yesterday also threw out a thick overcast in our direction that suppressed any potential convection, so yet another possible June storm chase was quashed.  Normally June is a very productive chase month here in Virginia with me scrambling to find the time to review photos and video from the last chase before setting out on the next one.  However this year's unusually early summer pattern has severely restricted productive June chasing both here and in most of the standard chase territory in the Plains.  Hopefully that will change a bit for us starting Friday as a stationary front sets up in the Mid-Atlantic and provides a trigger for convection for a few days.

In other news the proposed Virginia Tech Meteorology program is receiving more attention now that it has only one more wicket to pass through before it becomes official.  This article on the VT website provides some more perspective as to the benefits such a program will bring to the citizens of Virginia.

Hokie Stormchase 2011 is now officially over

The second group of the 2011 Hokie Stormchase is heading back to Blacksburg as I write this, due in sometime today.  I was not along for this trip but have been following their efforts to catch storms as part of a VT field course.  Unfortunately the second group ran into a "death ridge", the jet stream pattern that pushes the storminess north toward the Canadian border and has provided us with a generally northwest flow of upper air for the past week or so.  As a result they struggled to find decent storms to chase but have hopefully sharpened their forecasting skills during a difficult time.

All this is part of the soon-to-be-approved undergraduate meteorology major at Virginia Tech, which will be located in the Geography department within the College of Natural Resources and Environment.  In conjunction with the National Weather Service forecast office in Blacksburg such a program will prove beneficial to the state of Virginia as a practical application of research and analysis efforts to weather-related challenges faced by state residents.  A natural fit with our land-grant university, the new VT meteorology program should be a great benefit to Virginia citizens.

June 1 2011 Virginia hail fall video

This is what a lone storm chaser talks to himself about while hail is falling down around his vehicle.

June 1: A good day to chase

Based on the model forecasts I left home for Culpeper early this afternoon and arrived there around 2:00 p.m. to await convection given the monster CAPE values (>6000!) in northern Virginia.  Turned out that I was a bit early as things didn't start bubbling until 4:00, when several updrafts formed and almost immediately were tagged with hail icons on radar.  Fortunately they were moving slowly at around 15 knots so I didn't have to make immediate decisions on where to go.  I wandered around the Culpeper vicinity for a while, stopping to watch a rain free base under the first cell to see if any lowerings would occur:

Nothing formed so I moved south along Route 522 to stay ahead of the developing line of storms as the cells coalesced until I realized that I could get far enough south on that highway to catch the "tail-end Charley" storm.  Stopping a few miles south of Unionville I watched that cell crawl in my direction as it exhibited another rain free base:

Nothing showed under this storm either as the rain shaft pounded down just a couple hundred yards to the north.  I had just about decided to pull back out onto Route 522 and head back north when this cell exploded with numerous CG's (cloud-to-ground lightning) and hail started to fall.  The storm intensified literally over my head as I watched - and listened to - a ten minute hailfall that started with half-inch stones and wound up pile-driving my car with stones up to 1.5 inches in diameter:

The quarter (1" diameter) is shown for comparison.

(Note:  my chasemobile actually has a few hail dents now...source of a chaser's pride!)

After the very noisy hailfall finished I did head north and then back home, not wanting to chase that storm through the wilds of Spotsylvania county and around Lake Anna.  At home all was dry and storm-less, but a magnificent mammatus display near sunset made it all worthwhile: