Alberta Storm Chasing

It has been awhile since my last blog and I am sorry for those that have been faithfully checking. I am back to work in the paving industry and my free time is next to nil and the time off I have had has been very uneventful in the weather department. But that all changed yesterday as I finally got my first chase of the year in just NE of the Calgary city limits.

At about 2:30-3:00 pm yesterday I could see that some convection was firing up along the Foothills NW of the city. By 4:30 pm the first dark cloud began to fill the skies over northern Calgary where we were working. As I left work soon after it began to pour over the job site and the streets began to fill with water. There wasn't much for lightning or thunder in the area that I was located in. I really went blind into the chase as I hadn't had the internet with me nor had I checked the weather models for the past few days but I did hear over the radio that there was a Severe Thunderstorm Watch for much of southern Alberta and that was all I needed for a chase. I decided to follow the storm that passed over northern Calgary in hopes that it would intensify, which it didn't. What it did though was lead me to the storm I filmed in the above video. As I headed east passed Delacour, AB I notice that a cell north of my location was building fast. It looked strong with no base in site, just darkness. I originally was going to out run it but it was large and I had some time restraints so I decided to cut north through Nightingale, AB on a gravelled road.

This turned out to be a good idea as most of the footage was filmed about 20 minutes north of my turn off. As I approached the storm from the south I could see that it was dropping a lot of rain. The lightning started to appear once I was just under the shelf cloud as well as a constent thunder. I parked under the shelf just ahead of the rain/hail shalf and began to film. The base of the thunderstorm was constently moving under the shelf cloud and the storm started to drop a ton of scubs. The wind began to pick up and at one point in the video I thought I saw a funnel trying to form. You can see in the video that I pan away from the scud to see was I thought was rotation on the ground underneth. After editing the video I have come to realize I was caught in the moment and that it wasn't a funnel at all.

Also Alberta has seen two tornadoes touchdown in the last week. The first was in Proovost, AB just NE of Hanna and yesterday another touched down just NW of my location in Red Deer. Check out these photos of the funnel cloud and tornado that formed north of Red Deer yesterday from other chasers sites here in Alberta; Prairie Storm Tranquillity, Alberta Foothills Weather and ExtremeWX.ca.

As I write this EC has issued some Severe Thunderstorm Watches south of the city. Maybe another chasing day for me!!!!