July 26, 2009 Early AM Lightning

I woke up early this morning, pretty much in the middle of the night, hoping to see lighting associated with a forecasted cold front coming down from the north. After peeking out the bedroom window and seeing sparks flying, I was out the door by 3:45 am! The lightning wasn't very frequent from my location, so the 4 photos below are from being patient while shooting for an hour and a half. 3 photos were shot with the Tungsten white balance setting and 1 was shot with the White Florecent setting.

July 15 Volcanic Sunset and July 16 brief Severe Warned Storm

I'm still waiting to see a surface based storm around here! Already mid July and everything this year so far has been high based. I have reno's to do this weekend, so I can pretty much guarantee that a ground scraping monster will develop while my chasing is very limited. Murphys Law! I have a week off after this weekend, hopefully during that time I can chase a spinner somewhere. Today I was in the right area. Pretty well in the middle of the three counties that were severe watched. I cought a severe warned storm near Olds that was warned for what seemed about ten minutes before it fell apart. I also have a photo of a volcanic enhanced sunset from the other night.

July 12/2009 Forecast

Severe storms are possible today off the foothills in Alberta. Nice cape values in the order of 2500-3000j/kg, dews in the mid 60F range, southerly 850's, southerly surface winds and a lee side trough to get things going. A downfall is that H5 and H7 winds are not very great. Conditions may be conducive for HP development with the lack of good flow. Although dangerous, they can be quite photogenic! The best area seems to be near Drayton Valley north to the Yellowhead area where the best instability and moisture is forecast. The southerly 850's lie a bit further east, so hopefully if a storm does fire it can sustain itself to reach those winds. I may head to southeastern Alberta and maybe into southwestern Sask tomorrow as it looks like thunderstorm conditions will be there. Time will tell...

July 4/2009 Unconfirmed Tornado/Funnel

A lee side trough set the stage for a typical round of Alberta foothills thunderstorms today. Good flow aloft got them off the hills and moving east onto the prairies. Fallon and I targeted a isolated severe warned cell in the foothills northwest of Rocky Mountain House after almost heading south to get to the storms south of Olds on the QE2. After letting the storm core us northwest of Sylvan Lake, we follwed the backside of it east along the Aspelund road and stopped as we noticed funnels starting to spin. The first 4 photo's are of what I think is a brief rope like tornado that was west-north-west of Blackfalds, and the 5th photo is the funnel that everyone and thier dog observed in Red Deer. Decent southerly 850's were forecasted at 0z east of the foothills tonight, so I suspect once the storm reached those winds it gave it a little spin. Not supercellular, but either way they were fun to photograph! My holidays start soon, and I hope to photograph and document at least one stacked plated supercell.