Gustnado/Dust Storm Fun!

May 15th 2012 Was one of those type days that make you question your sanity, even though a slight risk of severe storms was in place, the threat of much of anything other than windy conditions was minimal at best, but with some nice daytime heating and some pretty steep lapse rates ahead of an approaching cold front, a stronger downburst type event was possible. Also the fact that the risk was literally in our backyards made the decision to chase a whole lot easier.

We started the day around 3:30pm on the Green/Dane/Rock county line area as that seemed to be the area of highest instability according to meso analysis. A few high based storms did start to pop up shortly there after and quickly die kicking out some gusty winds of maybe 40mph, but some of the lightning was pretty vivid. After watching this happen several times, eventually 2 storms got going and held together for a bit longer than the previous others, the only problem was 1 storm was north and one was south and both had decent cores on them. We decided to take the storm to the north since it was not gonna run over any previous rain cooled air, and at the time that seemed like the best possible play.

(C) Jason Schwartzlow

 

We stuck with this storm, which was moving at a snails pace, for about 45 minutes watching it spit out brief pea size hail and lower end gusty winds. When we arrived with the storm to the interstate the storm that we were on had weakened quite a bit and the storm we had passed on to the south had actually grown quite considerably in size and had some pretty decent amounts of lightning with it now. We decided to abandon the storm we were on and fly south to near Janesville (My hometown) and see if we could get ahead of it before it came over the city. As we drove down the interstate the amount of lightning strikes around us was surprisingly large, but the one thing this storm was lacking despite a stronger DBZ core was any precip. Something at the time I found to be quite odd. As we arrived just north of town several of the cars in front of us began to brake rapidly, figuring there was an accident ahead at the time. When we got a little bit closer we got a glimpse of what exactly was causing the cars to stop and pull over.

 

A fairly large gustnado and trailing dust storm were crossing the interstate right in front of us, being right next to an off ramp we decided to get off of the exit and go get a closer look into this. As we crosssd the off interstate on the bridge we got a great view of the gustnado crossing the highway.

 

Now up until this moment I've never seen anything like this, so you can imagine my amazement at the time. We decided to race southeast more and get back ahead of the outflow from this storm and see if it would do the same thing again. When we finally did get back ahead of it the next few minutes really became a little bit intense, the only words I can remember Jason saying were "there is a huge rotation right behind us" With that sentence we quickly pulled over to a side road an I was able to open my door quick enough to see the rotation making a dead aim for us.

 

I was able to snap off 2 quick pictures right before it ran over us, the second one is zoomed on the right showing the branches, corn stalks and dust it was churning across the field at us. I got back in quick and had to roll my window up, something I didn't quite get all the way to in time (I'm still cleaning dirt/corn stalks out of my stuff) The feeling when the gustnado hit the car was rather eary, it almost felt like it grabbed the car and was shaking it from side to side, we estimated the winds in it to be around 60-70mph. After it had passed the thing just kept spinning away in the field next to us giving us a great view of it up close.

(C) Jason Schwatzlow

 

Soon after this the storm had weakened quite a bit and we decided to just let it go on its way, after the storm had fully passed we were treated to a pretty awesome looking sky with some mammatus and a neat rainbow.

 

All in all it turned into a decent day being able to experience that for the 1st time, just goes to show even outflow can be fun sometimes ;)

A short while after this another gustnado had done some damage to a house in southeastern Wisconsin and a news station (WISN in Milwaukee) did a story regarding gustnadoes and what causes them and used my video footage from that day in the story.

http://www.wisn.com/weather/Gustnado-formed-Monday-during-storms/-/9374846/14297114/-/o0qc31z/-/index.html

 

My full video can be seen here. Thank y'all for taking the time to read, hope you enjoyed it!

 

Expect the unexpected.....

Sunday 8-19-12 was by no means anything special when the day started, but with a weak cold front interacting with the lake breeze boundary and some decent lapse rates you always have the chance at something happening. Most models indicated a few showers/storms would pop up by mid afternoon so decision was made on Sunday morning to give it a go.
The Initial idea was to head east towards Kenosha county and mess around with any storms that would pop up. As we got closer and closer to Kenosha a few showers did pop up, showing some decent tower structure for a bit, and then would die. Now there was a small threat for waterspouts along the coastal waters so we did keep that in mind. One thing that caught our eye on radar was a stronger line of storms just offshore near Wind Point. We decided to make our way up that way and hopefully storms would hold together and possible see a waterspout. About 45 minutes had passed before we arrived and the storms had significantly weakened, much to our frustration.The storms did spit out a weak boundary that looked pretty cool coming down the lakeshore area.

After watching this for a little bit a steady rain had begun to fall and the only storms on radar at the time were well off to the northwest out of reach. What seemed like a day that had a tiny glimmer of hope, was now coming to a swift end. We decided to head for home slowly and see if any storms would pop on the way back. After about 15 minutes on our way home, a storm all of the sudden popped just north of where we just were. We made the call to head back to Wind Point and watch the storm come down the lake as before, this time the storm had a strong core and a decent amount of lightning with it, so the odds seemed pretty decent that it would hold together and pass just to our east over the lake.
Unfortunately what seemed to be a reoccurring theme this year, was that storm would quickly weaken and do a split around us. With frustration getting pretty high we once again decided to head back towards the west and see if the storms to the north would hold together or anything new would fire. We slowly made our way to the northwest to take the long way home and decided to stop at a local gas station and get something to drink. When I came out Jason stated that the storm that had just formed north of Milwaukee had went severe warned for what was some pretty hefty hail.


Radar image courtesy of Jayson Prentice

After contemplating a route and time to get to the storm, we decided to make a run north as we were only about 30 minutes from the storm. A decision we would soon not regret. The drive north seemed like it took forever, but the storm was well within reach. As we were driving up the lake shore near downtown Milwaukee the sky was growing very dark and ominous to the north and excitement was running pretty high! We passed a spot that overlooked the downtown Milwaukee skyline on the lake and briefly considered stopping and letting the storm come to us, but decided to keep going. When we arrived in pretty much downtown Milwaukee the storm had lost it's severe warning but still had a nice strong core on it.

With the storm pretty much to the north side of Milwaukee, we decided to spin back around and head to the spot overlooking the downtown area. When we made it to the spot, we had to park on the road, wall across a field and it came to a set of woods leading down to a beach....Only problem was, there is no paved path, just a muddy runoff trail that was already slippery from earlier rains. After making the highly dangerous (JK) trek down and almost falling several times, we came thru an opening to the beach to see the most unexpected, beautiful sight over the skyline.

We sat there for several minutes snapping pictures and being in just awe, when Jason got this awesome lightning shot over the city.

                                                                               (C) Jason Schwartzlow

After this the wind would soon pick up and the shelf would be past us, leaving us with a feeling of surprise and excitement for what we had just seen! The ride home was a fun one as we saw tons of towers and back lit cumulus popping up everywhere, and some awesome looking bases on storms near us. Just as we were about to get on the interstate towards home, we saw one of the most vibrant rainbows I have ever seen! We searched for a decent spot to get a few shots but none were to be found so we pulled to the side of the road (nearly hit a guardrail, but we won't discuss that) and saw this amazing display of nature.

                                                             (C) Jason Schwartzlow

After an afternoon of seeing some of the most beautiful displays put on by mother nature, she had one more trick up her sleeve for us on the way home, as we arrived near Whitewater, another storm had fired to the northwest right at sunset, giving the sky a fiery pink color with the shadowed sun and a lightning display to die for, simply one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen, unfortunately my camera battery had died so all I have to show for it is a screen grab from my video camera showing the color display and lightning.

On a day that seemed like it was a waste, taught us a valuable lesson...no matter how frustrating it gets and no matter how bad it seems, never give up and always expect the unexpected.
The rest of my shots of the shelf cloud can be seen here http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.2377227565585.65053.1697501006&type=1 Thank you for reading! :)

Beloit, Wisconsin storm damage photos 7-24-12

A season ready to be put on the "shelf"

Wednesday July 18th was a rather odd day for this year in Southern Wisconsin terms, we have been experiencing a drought that has been what seems like a never ending cycle. I woke up that morning to some beautiful pictures of a sunrise Cumulus tower over Dane and Jefferson county. Now if you know me, you know that I am a sucker for structure shots, so I was feeling a little disappointed that I missed it.

Courtesy Jason Schwartzlow Dane/Jefferson county sunrise storm

A few meteorologists I know began talking about the possibility of a few storms reforming that afternoon along a cold front that would be draped somewhere across Southern Wisconsin/Northern Illinois. I was a bit skeptical at 1st due to lack of shear, or so it seemed but my interest was still quite peaked. With the 8am update that morning the SPC issued a slight risk of severe storms for much of Southern Wisconsin, still a bit skeptical I decided to go look over models one more time, a few of the HD models did indicate a pretty hefty complex of storms swinging thru the area by around 7pm. Looking further into the models it seemed right across southern Wisconsin was a nice axis of instability and at least a little shear would be present along the boundary. After talking it over with Jason, we decided that since we haven't had much to chase around here in 2 months, we would go out and give it a try just to see if we could get a storm form discretely and work some magic along the boundary. Around 11:30 am a mesoscale discussion was issued concerning a potential severe threat across the area, issuance of watch was only 40% and seemed unlikely at the time but the plan to head west a bit and mess around with anything that formed was still in place. At around 1pm, much to our excitement and a Severe thunderstorm watch was issued for most of S. Wisc/N. Illinois and part of MN and IA.
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When you have not seen much action in the last month or so, this became a very exciting moment.
The plan was just to drift off to the west, maybe near Monroe and follow the storms back home. We left Janesville about 2:30pm and headed west as planned, while on the way there was a very thick patch of broken Cumulus and "turkey towers" everywhere. At around 4:00pm a small storm (rain shower) formed just to our north in Green County. We decided to hang around it and see if it would do anything at all. About an hour later after watching this storm pulse up and die and do the same thing several time, we were considering abandoning it as many little spuds were firing up all around us and had a few lightning indicators with them,also a bigger and stronger line was on the fringe of entering Wisconsin from IA and we thought that may be our only play on something decent and maybe a decent shelf cloud (remember this). Around 5:30pm the storm we where on all of the sudden went into beast mode, on radar and visually, all of the sudden it was spitting out CGs and had a nice little hail core on it. About 10 minutes later the weather radio went off and the storm was now severe warned in Rock county for quarter size hail and damaging winds. We hung back a bit to get a few quick shots of the beautiful Anvil from the storm and the weather radio went of again, now we where caught between 2 severe warned storms, and had to make a choice as to which one to get into.

Caught between 2 severe warned storms

The decision was made to go after the storm to our east since it was headed for home and showed a very nice looking base on it. Now Southern Wisc has nice road networks for chasing, but this particular time we needed it, an east road was nowhere to be found, a very frustrating occurrence when chasing storms. We finally found our east option and were able to get near the base of the storm at this time, the base was very rugged and sloppy but it did show a tiny bit of broad rotation in it so we decided to go in for a closer look. At this time we got a clear view of the hail shaft in the storm which looked to be quite healthy.

(c) Jason Schwartzlow Rock county hail shaft with rainbow

After playing around in the storm for a little bit, a decision was now needed to either abandon the storm and head north to intercept the incoming bow echo or stick with the storm. After going back and forth on the decision for a little bit, the decision was made to abandon the storm we where on since it looked to be weakening, and head north thru Orfordville towards Dane county to see if the shelf on the incoming bow was worth it. While driving north out of Orfordville, it was apparent that the storm we were on had a bit of a wrath with it, leaving many large branches strewn all over the roadways, few roofs with hail damage, and crop fields storm damaged.
At this point the line of storms was moving at a decent place across the state and we knew we would have to decide on a place with good visibility to watch the storm come in.

Stoughton was the general area we decided on since you get east of town it is pretty wide open farm land, only problem was this path would take us directly thru the town, which is always a pain in the butt. After being stuck being some of the slowest drivers we have ever encountered, we finally arrived on a nice road off of the highway with a great view of the incoming storm, what we thought was gonna be a decent shelf,exceeded the expectations like I could never explain. It took us a brief few minutes to get our tripods and cameras set up, what happened next will be a few minute I will never forget. The horizon started to darken in a way it always does with an approaching squall line/bow echo. There was almost a freakishly calm feeling in the air. As the horizon grew more and more dark, one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen broke thru.

After watching that amazing shelf come thru and standing there in awe for several minutes, a quick peak at radar became evident that we could make it back 20 miles south by my house south of Janesville in time for quite possibly another shelf cloud.
We encountered some heavy rain and gusty winds getting to the interstate to head south but quickly approached the front edge of the line again. With sunset approaching fast and an already dark sky, we were unsure what we would be able to capture on camera. We arrived at one of our favorite parks in Rock county that gives you an almost unobstructed 360 view of the sky and got set up, a few minutes later we where rewarded again!

(c) Jason Schwartzlow

After this shelf had passed we sat in a lightning barrage that lasted a good 30 minutes, the 15 minute ride home was one of the most awesome rides ever, the mood in the car was just of pure joy and disbelief that Wisconsin can produce such beautiful storm structure, with a year that's been anything but decent to chase, this may have revived it, even if just for a short time :)