A Special Chase in an Unexpected Place 3-30-14

On this particular Sunday I was in California for the weekend visiting my brother who will soon be deploying. As a series of weather systems came in the Pacific Northwest, a threat for isolated severe weather was a possibility in the Sacramento valley area. The previous day a few tornado warned cells did pop up about 40 miles to the north of our location, one in which  produced an EF-0 tornado. While taking a peak at radar early Sunday afternoon, a cell to our west caught my eye as having a certain "shape" to it, a shape that you often see a storm take on when it its a mature/strong storm. After watching this storm on radar for a little bit my brother and I decided to give a local chase a go.

The route to get to the storm took us through Yuba City, now most of you know me know that I am from Wisconsin and would not wish California drivers on anyone, not to mention the over abundance of stop lights. As we finally made our way through town we gout our 1st decent view of the storm, quite a beautiful cell to my surprise.

After finally reaching the storm near Sutter, we got a view of the storm and Sutter Butte mountain range together, one of the most beautiful sights I could ever imagine.

We sat and watched the storm for awhile and just taking in the beauty of it when a wall cloud with some decent rotation did start to form along the rear flank of the storm.

After watching this for a little while and hoping it would produce a surprise California tornado, the storm was quickly halted by more stable air over the mountains. As the storm began to die it did leave a parting shot of beautiful lightning over the green fields.

Normally a chase like this would not be anything special, but it marked a few firsts for me. My 1st chase of 2014, my 1st California chase and most importantly my 1st chance to chase with my brother, that alone made it something very special to me and this will forever be one of my favorite chases.