1st Ever Canadian StormChase

[Paul Sherman]

In just 1 week from now we will be starting our first ever Canadian Prairies Chase for Netweather. The Extended Models look really good for Storms, Chase Areas next week will include Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northern Plains on the USA.

Will post regular updates in this thread.

[MikeUpjohn]

Hope all goes well for you! If Estevan, SK day was anything to go by, you will have a blast! Stay safe!

[cheeky_monkey]

wouldn't bother with Alberta been the worst storm season i can remember 

[fujita5]

I follow Reed Timmer on Twitter and some of the storms he's intercepted up there recently have been amazing.  Beautiful structure coupled with wonderful scenery.  Jealous! 

[Roger J Smith]

Sounds like a great idea. Canada gets its fair share of severe storms. There has been at least one F-5 tornado (at Elie, Manitoba a few years ago, it was videotaped but did little damage fortunately staying over large fields for most of its track). There have been quite a few F-3 or even F-4 tornado instances that have hit towns and caused damage and fatalities. Here's a partial list of the largest tornado events in Canada:

1912 _ An F-4 tornado did a lot of damage in Regina, SK which at that time was a much smaller town than today, and there were roughly 30 people killed in that storm, which I recall being end of June. 

1922 _ A large tornado hit Portage la Prairie, a town between Winnipeg and Brandon MB and several people were killed.

1979 _ An F-4 moved through small rural towns near Woodstock, ON in August and levelled a few houses, several people were killed. I saw that damage the next day as I was driving through the area.

1985 _ A strong F-3 hit the city of Barrie north of Toronto on May 31st, killing eight people and levelling a section of the city. This cell lasted for over an hour and came within two miles of my home at that time (in Peterborough, ON) where it was still an F-1, we were on the north side of the cell and just got rain and hail but I got to see the green sky effect.

1987 _ A tornado hit parts of Edmonton (31st of July) and produced a death toll near 30.

2000 _ An F-3 developed rapidly and hit a trailer park at a lake north of Calgary (Pine Lake) with several people killed. That was around this time of year (mid July). Some time around then a town in southwest SK had 12" of rain from a stalled supercell that led to severe flooding. 

more recently, and I don't have the actual years in mind, damaging tornadoes hit Goderich on Lake Huron and the western suburbs of Ottawa. I can think of somewhat less destructive tornado touchdowns in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and southern BC near where I live now. 

So we do get them and they are about on the same scale as May in Oklahoma, the weather dynamics are fairly similar in July in the prairies. The "dry line" feature may be hit or miss, many of our tornadic storms form on cold fronts. But south central SK can have temperatures well into the 30s and low 40s, and dew points into the mid-20s. Very large hail is common in Alberta and Saskatchewan as well. 

Good luck with this storm chase. 

 

(more complete lists of Canadian tornadoes here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks

... up to year 2000, and this links to a more recent list )

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Roger J Smith

[Paul Sherman]

Many Thanks for this Roger 

And I see Edmonton is under a watch for severe weather today as well

[Roger J Smith]

Paul, I think you'll find Weyburn SK between Regina and Estevan is one place that gets more than its share of severe storms, and from there they tend to move northeast and cross the Trans-Canada Highway near Broadview SK. No guarantees but I would scout the roads in that section of the province (I have been through both places but never tried to navigate from one to the other directly). What range of dates will your tour cover? 

[cheeky_monkey]

On 10/07/2019 at 15:19, Paul Sherman said:

Many Thanks for this Roger 

And I see Edmonton is under a watch for severe weather today as well

not a sausage in Edmonton ..had a cpl light showers..been no thunderstorms to hit the city this year thus far..need the heat for that and there has been none this year...i think SK/MB is the place to be this season

[Paul Sherman]

19 hours ago, Roger J Smith said:

Paul, I think you'll find Weyburn SK between Regina and Estevan is one place that gets more than its share of severe storms, and from there they tend to move northeast and cross the Trans-Canada Highway near Broadview SK. No guarantees but I would scout the roads in that section of the province (I have been through both places but never tried to navigate from one to the other directly). What range of dates will your tour cover? 

Hi

We will be chasing from Monday 15th until Thursday the 25th July 

[Paul Sherman]

9 minutes ago, cheeky_monkey said:

not a sausage in Edmonton ..had a cpl light showers..been no thunderstorms to hit the city this year thus far..need the heat for that and there has been none this year...i think SK/MB is the place to be this season

Yh most of our chases will be in SAS and Manitoba and the Dakotas, if we are around Edmonton then we really are doing something badly wrong 

[cheeky_monkey]

9 minutes ago, Paul Sherman said:

Yh most of our chases will be in SAS and Manitoba and the Dakotas, if we are around Edmonton then we really are doing something badly wrong 

Mind you an F4 tornado did hit Edmonton In July 1987 killing 27 people and injuring 250

[Mark71]

Have a great time next week I will be following this trip as I have registered my interest in the storm chasing in  Canadian Prairies next year

[Mark71]

Just had a look at the models over the next few days and it looks like there is a small risk of severe storms in around the the eastern side of Saskatchewan and Manitoba with most of the activity in the Dakota and Montana area especially on Monday. Storm Barry could help in the next few days as it tracks North with it large amount of humidity to help develop severe storms    

[Roger J Smith]

There have been some fairly strong storms in the past three hours in southern SK and it looks like a reload will happen late Sunday (bad timing for the chase dates). That cluster will exit the region on Monday. It then looks a little quieter for much of the week in the Canadian portion but I do see several fairly good opportunities around the eastern SD and southwest MN region through next week. Hot and dry signal for weekend of 20th-21st followed by slowly advancing frontal zone could be quite good in Montana and southern Alberta towards end of chase period. Where do your flights land and depart? Just thinking of the logistics near end of that time window. 

(Barry a non-factor, that moisture will be swept northeast into Ohio valley towards Maryland and Virginia, but it's already plenty humid in ND and SK now, dew points near 20 reported today in SK)

Edited July 14, 2019 by Roger J Smith

[Paul Sherman]

Yeah Canada looks High and dry this coming work week but am seeing signs of chases end of the week with a deep area of Low Pressure coming in for the 18th to 20th - Looks like Montana tomorrow, Wyoming on Tuesday and then Eastern Dakotas on Wednesday before making our way North again for the end of the week.

[Jo Farrow]

just missed a reported tornado at Crossfire 2pm Sunday , just north of Calgary where we are today, we arrived last night. Off to US today . 

[Paul]

So, what better way to start the chase than a chat about Chicken George?

 

[Polar Maritime]

"I bet" lol

[Roger J Smith]

Enhanced severe risk today in northern half of western South Dakota roughly Black Hills to ND border. Active front in s.e. Montana at present but best looking potential developer is in northeast Wyoming. This will peak late today and last most of the overnight hours moving gradually east through northern SD. Then tomorrow southeast ND around Fargo to Jamestown, east towards Alexandria MN to Redwood Falls MN looks good. Western half of MN fairly open country, would not chase into forested areas around Bemidji though. 

Edited July 16, 2019 by Roger J Smith

[Jo Farrow]

It’s day two Weds, for the tour that started in Canada, we should return later this week. This is the fifth of six for Weather holidays and there is a group of fifteen, Paul B, 13 return guests and two newbies including me. My first time storm chasing and today we saw a supercell behind Devils Tower.

We’d chased an LP (low precipitation) supercell through Montana on day 1 and started Weds in South Dakota after just nipping across the corner of Wyoming and “core punching” the supercell in torrential rain and plenty of lightning.

The day started with clear blue skies, no warnings yet from the NWS and no Rapid City radar. It was out of service, likely damaged in the previous day’s lightning.

So we set off to Devils Tower, an igneous butte, just back in Wyoming. Stunning setting, the location for Close Encounters of a Third Kind. And how the day developed. A slow moving classic supercell, just to the west of the Tower with enough CGs (ground to cloud lightning Cloud Ground) to keep the photographers on their toes. It did look like a spaceship in the end. Quite a phenomenal sight.

This is Cowboy and Indian country, the places names are familiar or engaging. Sundance, Spearfish and the Badlands. We set off to get a view from slightly further away but as often happens, something else caught Paul’s eye. We ended up by Moorcroft  the location of a stunning/bizarre looking tornado from Day 1, dropping from very high cloud. The next supercell was looking juicy and once further away we could view its magnificent scale.

We moved again, through a forested area, even though I was in car two (of three) I could imagine Paul B saying “Bloody trees” At the beginning of the day he’d talked about hail as one guest had wanted to see some yesterday, yet the core only gave rain. Paul said “you can’t go looking for hail, it comes looking for you”. And yes it did. Still with no radar, it arrived. 

Wow that is noisy. It was ping pong ball sized.

Once it stopped, it was like a vicious snow shower had cleared. The roads were white but it created an incredible hail fog. And the smell was so fragrant. Fresh, from the battered vegetation, a sublime mix that was like an expensive, yet wholly natural bottle of perfume, wafting around us. 

There was a white mist over the fields, eerie and atmospheric. The hail stone were showing their layers from their travels up and down inside the supercell, forced by the powerful Updraughts, getting later on layer of ice.

Next a rain/hail bow and we were all quite satisfied. Oh la la

 

[Jo Farrow]

The second supercell and a tornado was seen at a four Corners from this

Edited July 18, 2019 by Jo Farrow
Add tornado location

[Jo Farrow]

We have Canadian plates on the cars, after the hail storm the first car to pass us (we were parked up) shouted Welcome to WYOMING! 

[Allseasons-Si]

Some stunning pics there Jo,thanks,and stay safe.

[Roger J Smith]

Looks like a day of slow development close to the SD-ND border (possibly into ne WY) with the storms most likely to form between 00z and 03z (which is 6 to 9 pm Mountain daylight time, 7 to 10 pm Central daylight time) or around sunset. Current radar is fairly inactive except much further west with some cells in n.w. Montana. Hopefully the Bismarck radar catches this development if Rapid City stays off line.

Extreme heat is building to the south with the 594 dm thickness contour well into Colorado later today. 

On Friday there is a similar outlook but further south in South Dakota with slow daytime development and faster storm growth towards sunset and lasting most of the night with the extreme heat feeding a nearly stationary front (slow southward drift indicated overnight). There is also a secondary cold front depicted in Canada around 200 kms north of the border likely showing similar development cycles. The air mass in between the two fronts would be roughly 25/15 temp dew points so that secondary might have some potential for locally severe storms around Yorkton to Riding Mountain. 

[Jo Farrow]

Rapid city radar is back online.