WxQuebec weather blog!

2006-06-27T12:48:00.000-04:00

Chasing The Wall (June 19th 2006)

2006-06-21T20:47:00.000-04:00

I was caught at work all day! Multiple cells were passing fairly close to Montreal, some of them were severe causing minor damages in the eastern townships. I never taught that I would be out chasing since the sky was clearing out. Coming home after work, me and Marianne noticed some TCu's were firering up. I checked out the wx data, including radars and things were promising! My good friend and chaser Patrick called me and we agreed to meet in Deux-Montagnes since a cell seemed to be heading for that area. On the road, my other chaser friend Mathieu called and asked where we were going and he agreed to join us on that chase. Once on Highway 13 (Northbound) Mathieu caught with us and we followed each other to our observing spot in Deux-Montagnes. Once on the spot a huge wall (the storm cell) was right in front of us, but we noticed that it was moving more eastward so we needed to repositionned ourselves. I called our Nowcaster Julie, she was at home cjhecking out data. She told us to move east to try to catch that cell. Unfortuinately the sun was getting low and we could see the cloud started shrinking... So we moved to Terrebonne and we stopped for gazoline. Patrick and his girlfriend Sonia arrived to join us. We talked a bit in the parking of the gaz station to see if things would start. Mathieu was scanning the sky and he saw lightning and it became more and more frequent. So we needed to move on Highway 640 East so we could arrive to meet with the storm. On the road we noticed some very weird cloud formation (it was now night time, so the structure was hard to see) at the same time we could feel the car being pushed by strong winds. Unfortunately, we were not able to photograph things feature BUT a friend of mine was not far from there and he did a few seconds exposure time on that structure and WOW! It's pretty amazing! The picture below is worth a thousand words. By now, lightning was more or so frequent, so we ended up to our friends house (also a chaser). For some reason Pierre-Marc was expecting us LOLL.. (he knew that we were in the area). All of a sudden, lightning began again and the wind picked-up, Pierre-Marc hopped in Mathieu's car and off we went to an observing spot to try to catch some lightning, the storm was moving way to fast for us to chase it, so we went by the river hoping to catch something. Not an amazing chase but a needed one since we have a lack of storms around here lately! hehe

First mini-chase of 2006

2006-06-03T19:54:00.000-04:00

May 31st - 2006 Who would of known that I would chase chase my first storm so early in the morning? After spending a good portion of the night updating the web site of the Association de Chasseurs d'Orages (Association of Storm Chasers), I was talking over MSN Messenger with a chaser friend of mine, we were watching a pretty good storm that was in the Laurentians and was headed right for Montreal. I was telling my friend that I had the intention of going after that cell. But like usual the cell started dying out. Usually, when it dies, it stays dead, but for some reason she tells me 10 minutes later that the cell is redevelopping and indeed since my lightning detector was beeping more and more. We didn't think about it for to long, we decided to head out! We live a few dozens kilometer from one each other so we decided that we would communicate via teh cell phone so we can know where we are and possibly meet. Even tough it was now 2am in the morning I managed to be caught in a bit of traffic since the highway I intended to take was closed for construction.... so I lost some time and I missed the first cell. We spoke to each other and she told me to find a place where I was now since a cell was about to get over me, so I parked in the parking of a garage. Five minutes later I had pretty neat lightning bolts close by. 10 minutes later Julie arrived and we checked out the radars with her onboard wireless internet connection.... all the cells have passed so we decided to split, while I was heading home I was at the tail of one of the storms... so I took these pics!

Finally, I got home in bed at 4h15am and I had to wake up at 5h30am to go to work so that was sure of a short night of sleep. During the day, I was checking out the SPC website and we were right ion the middle of a slight risk and that's good! At 4pm the storm were here and it was again loaded with lightning and the rain was abundant! I was working so I did get the chance to chase and the storms persisted well into the evening but I was too tired to after it, so I decided just to stay around the neibourhood trying to find a good spot to videotape the storms.

Last year interview for CTV

2006-02-17T10:11:00.000-05:00

I just remembered this morning that the interview I did for CFCF12 (CTV) was online. I uploaded it on Putfile servers. So if you wanna have a good laugh take a look ;)

http://media.putfile.com/acoctv

Sick of it!

2006-02-15T11:20:00.000-05:00

Here in Montreal, we have some pretty serious winters some time. This year, winter is somewhat mild... I just wish it could just go all away so we can get into action real fast!!! I miss so much storms.. I can't wait any longer for our first storms and that's still 3 months away....

July 10th 2005 Storm Spotting

2005-09-03T12:19:00.000-04:00

It's the start of the evening and a few weak storms are rolling in after a complete day under clear blue skies. This cell caught us a bit by surprise. We were expecting 1 or 2 weak storms but not something this strong. Because of some car problems, me and Marianne could not go out chasing that day... but our balcony gave us a good view of what seemed to be a Supercell.

Here are a few pics of that cell that produced a microburst that caused some damage in Ste-Genevieve de Berthier.

July 1st 2005 Storm Chase

2005-09-02T23:30:00.000-04:00

The first of July is not only Canada day but Storm chasing days for us! Last year we had a busy 1st of July and this year too! This year we had the chance to have an all day chase compared to last year where we chased only in the evening.... We left Ville LaSalle at around 12:30. Our chaser friend Julie Deshaies joined us for the chase and was following us. Our first goal was to go near the US border since the weather data were very good for that area. So we took the Mercier Bridge and we then took the 132 East so we could get on the 15 South highway. At the level of Candiac the weather radio alarm rings, a warning was just issued. Environment Canada issued a severe storm warning right on the targeted area we were going for. On the highway, CG lightning was frequent. we caught a few of them on video. It was raining really hard and the wind was very strong. A few minutes later a friend of ours confirmed us that we were right under a meso! Just like the june 6th chase, we took the exit for St-Édouard. The winds were picking up speed, visibility was close to none and to be honest, I was expecting to see branches and small trees flying pass me anytime soon. The road to St-Edouard was flooded in some areas so I was really carefull not to go aquaplanning. We finally arrived at the back of the local church. Getting out of the car I noticed immediately the tail cloud that was now disorganizing. (photo #1). Our good friend Mathieu and his girlfriend Julie (#2) were on their way to join us in St-Edouard.During that time we were receive live informations from Martin, Julie Deshaies friend that is a meteorologist. Mathieu finally arrived not too long after and we were told to move to the next village (Sherrington) to catch an upcoming storm. As soon as we arrived in Sherrington a lightning bolt cam down very close to us and ended in a cacophony! The thunder was really loud! Wow! A Fruit and Vegetable stand was there with a few customers and they were scared by that lightning strike! From that stand we took the picture #2. The cell that was suppose to hit us weakened to the point where we decided to head back to St-Edouard. Once back in St-Edouard, we noticed a good cell to our North (photo #3). Our nowcaster Martin called us to tell us to go right away to the next village (St-Michel) since a huge cell was developping there. That cell had 70dBz echo in it... hail? So, en route to St-Michel. On the road we could easily see the big cell (photo #4). Arrived in St-Michel we got pounded by heavy rain but almost nothing else... Mathieu noticed some small hail stones but nothing serious, so back to St-Edouard we go. Back in St-Edouard our good friends Pierre-Marc and Jeff arrived to join us and at that moment, we got pounded again by heavy rain. The roads and parking lot where we were got flooded a little bit. Right after the passage of that storm we went outside our cars and noticed a wall cloud producing a funnel cloud that played hide & seek. It was tough to see as the contrast was not amazing. (see photos 5 & 6). After a good (but fast) supper our nowcaster Martin gave us a call to let us know that the actionwas now about 100km away from us in Huntingdon. So we took the 219 South to Hemmingford. when going there Marianne noticed right behind us a beautifull cell to our West (photo #7). From now on, our chase was getting more and more difficult. The cold front was breaking up and high level clouds blocked the sun. We decided to go to St-Eustache, since it was there that the elements were still good. On the road we captured a beautifull forming cell (photo #8). We were now in St-Eustache and nothing much was happening. Our chaser friend Alain Fontaine joined us there. We talked for awhile and decided to go at Pierre-Marc's house to check out radar data on the net. While going to Pierre-Marc's house, we saw a beautifull cell that had a nice pileus to it! (photo #9). Once at PM's house radars weren't telling us much and we decided to call it quits! nWe headed back home to LaSalle and we managed to see some nice cloud formations! We also saw some lightning... (photo # 10).

Damage Assessment of the Vercheres tornado of June 25th 2005

2005-09-02T00:02:00.000-04:00

Written by Gaetan Cormier Photos by: Gaetan Cormier & Mathieu Lussier On June 25th 2005, the small community of Vercheres got to live the worst phenomenon that Mother Nature offers... a tornado! It's at 3:50pm that very strong winds caused damages to trees, power lines and a few farming structures. The next day, after hearing about the damages, my storm chasing friend Mathieu Lussier went to Vercheres to take a look at the damages. When he got there he was surprised by the amount of damage that was there. He had a feeling that it was more than just a microburst like people taught so he called our Severe Weather expert at Environment Canada and alert them of the situation. EC asked Mathieu to send in photos via e-mail before to get a team to evaluate the damages. After seeing the photos EC sent a team to make a damage assessment of the area. Because of our good friend Mathieu, EC was able to come to the conclusion that a tornado caused all the havock! The tornado was rated F1. We also did our own damage assessment (right after EC did theirs) and at that time we didn't know what was the strengh of the tornado on the Fujita scale. Here's what we got... When we arrived in Vercheres, it didn't take long that we saw some small branches on the ground and Mathieu found within a minute our first damage to a tree! This tree was large! It was hard to beleive that strong gust of wind could do this to a large tree like that! Take a look at this. Mathieu poses near the tree for reference! More branches snapped in several trees. we had to be carefull since they were over our heads! On our way to a farmers field we saw this grass that was flatten down in the field. Microburst or tornado signature? Another large tree was lying down. This one inaccessible for us since it was far in the middle of a farmers field. We arrived at the farm of the Ménard family. this is what's left of their newly built garage. Still the garage from another angle. This is the barn, we can see that the flax elevator was pushed against the lenght of the wall. Minor damage to the barn. The collapsed garage on top of a Ford Truck Damage of the truck. Part of the garage roof lying near by... The cows survived the ordeal!!! They were outside during the event and none of them got hurt, but hey! they are lucky, at least the saw the tornado! Debris from the collapsed garage could be found as far as 1 kilometer away Damage could be seen also in the forest 1 kilometer away from the farm. Damage to a tree not too far away from the farm. I took GPS read out of all the damages and I plotted them on a map to see the path of the tornado, very interesting!!! I'll put it up here eventually.

June 29th 2005 Storm Chase

2005-09-01T23:36:00.000-04:00

The cold front passed earlier on this morning, the risk of thunderstorms we rather low for the remaining of the day. To my surprise, some cells were popping in the Laurentians on radar. My Boltek lightning detector was catching ome strikes occasionnaly. Me and Marianne decided to go to meet this cell that was looking to get more and more intense. We decided to go in Laval on the 440 highway. On our way the sky was getting an eerie look. we decided to park ourselves in a Petro-Canada station to get some footage. We rarely seen a sky so threatning. we could see the scuds getting swallowed by the intensifying cell. We could see on occasion some small funnels. All of a sudden the wind started blowing! This cell was absorbing everyhting on it's way. The rain started with no warning and it was raining hard. We were back on the road and visibility was almost next to nothing. Most cars on the highay were stopped on the sides, we were the only ones actually driving in thsi downpour. The Rain X on our windshield surely helped us hehe! We decided to come back to Montreal since the cell was heading South of us. So we took highway 13 South and then the 20 East. I wanted to get on teh Champlain bridge but heavy traffic made it impossible. So I decided to take the Ville Marie Highway to hope and get on teh Jacques-Cartier Bridge. But with all this time list.. the cell was now too far away for us to catch it. So we decided to let it go and call off for the night. Still, we had some good images and it was a nice little chase!

June 28th 2005 Storm Chase (BUST)

2005-09-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

This is the first storm chase since 2000 that I end up really mad of getting absolutely nothing! We left home at around 8:30pm. We took the Champlain bridge. From the bridge we could see many CG lightning. From there we took Highway 10 East and after we took the 133 South hoping to still catch a little bit of activity that was still way furthur South of us. From this moment we were searching for a spot to park and set up the cameras. We now took the 104 East and we finally found a gas station were we could park. The area was giving us a dark sky, no stray light but at that time the electrical activity of the storm practically came to a halt. A few CC's were seen between two time exposures... grrrr darn! From there, we just packed everything and decided to get back home. Once back on Highway 10, just a few kilometers from the bridge, our good friend and storm chaser Alain gave us a call to let us know of a storm forming North-east of Montreal. So we took the 132 East to find a good road to bring us there. I was really starting to feel the fatigue. So I toook the Tunnel-Bridge H.L. to get back on the island of Montreal. Out of the tunnel Alain told us that the storm was already in the vacinity of Lavaltrie... I just decided to call it quit for the night.. I was just to exausted so we headed back home and just live with the fact that we busted big time!

June 15th 2005 Spotting

2005-09-01T23:01:00.000-04:00

Coming back from work, thunderstorms were following me all the to my home hehe. The sky was very dark and eerie and lightning was more and more present. A bi CG lightning hit something in the park in front of our house. the sound was crakling and very loud! This storm gave a good amount of rain too!

June 11th 2005 Spotting

2005-09-01T22:50:00.000-04:00

After our supper, we decided to take a walk and why not go get an ice cream cone. Once outside we were mesmerized by this beautifull Cumulus Congestus cloud that was forming to our East. It was expanding so fast, that it did not take to much time to end up has a Cumulonimbus! Here are some shots.

June 6th 2005 Storm Chase

2005-09-01T21:13:00.000-04:00

Well, finally it happened our first chase of the season! At first I was a bit scared since the storms started rolling in very early in the morning (around 5am) and I had to work from 10am to 6pm. So in my head the storms were going to be all gone before 6pm... So at 6pm I get off work.. once outside I noticed that it was very hot and humid, ha! ah! Good sign! 6:30 I was home and getting ready to go out chasing with my girlfriend (and chase partner) Marianne. Well you know what they say... 6 o'clock magic!!! Magic has been done.. some cell's were developping in the Laurentians near St-Jerome. 4 chasers of our Storm Chasing Association were at going to that cell. Me and Marianne were prepping the car, we went to the gas station to fill up the car and off to St-Jerome we go.. but wait!!!! There's a darn beautifull cell starting to pop to our South... We call the guys over the cell phone to tell them that we are not going to meet them in St-Jerome but that we are going to chase that new cell to the South. So we took the Mercier bridge... Once in Chateauguay, the cell started developping (see photo #1). Shear was good, Marianne noticed a horse shoe vortex, but by the time we took the cam, it pretty much dissipated (photo #2). Looking at the mouvement of the cell, we decided to take the Highway 30 in the St-Catherine direction. Once on the 132 at the height of the city of Candiac we noticed that the Cb was taking more and more expension (photo#3). This cell was really photogenic. The sun was setting giving us to opportunity to take beautifull shots (photo #4). We took the exit to get on Highway 15 South in direction of the US border. A few kilometers away on the 15 South we parked the car on the side of the road to take some video shots and also photographs of some shy mammatus clouds that was forming overhead (photo #5). From the 15 South we took the exit for the small town of St-Edouard and we took West. A superb cloud illuminated from behind showed a feature that looked like a wall-cloud, it was really nice.(photo #6) Now we were at only a few minutes away before finding ourselves under the base of this Cumulonimbus. On our way to St-Edouard we could see (from what I believe) a wall cloud that was trying to get it's act together.(photo #7). Photo #8 shows that "wall-cloud " when it passed over our heads, we can see a small appendice (funnel?)

Once in St-Edouard, we found a parking spot at the local convinence store so we could observe the storm that had now started. A few good lightning bolts with strong thunder were seen and heard! (Ahhhhh for the first time this season, it's good to hear). Pounding rain with gust ranging in the 50km/h was seen. The storm motion was rather fast making it impossible to chase, that's why we decided to just watch it do it's thing. We did not even caught lightning on video...

Once the storm passed, we took the time to fill up our stomachs.. we didn't even had supper yet! On photo #9 we can see the storm that justed passed us and we can easily see it's flanking line. The air was rather cooler since the storm passed.

Look at that beautifull cell illuminated by the setting sun! (photo#10) Two of our friends that were on the St-Jerome cell finally arrived in St-Edouard to meet us. Once they arrived, we saw to our South a nice Cb that was over NY state that had an exploded anvil!!! (photo#11) If any of you know what that is, please leave a comment, I would like to know what causes this! Our first chase of the season now came to an end and we headed back home, under a beautifull sunset . Some cells were still developping to our West, but these were much to far away to even think of chasing them. Photo #13 Finally, our third chase member of our team, fell asleep after all that chasing, Baby Lea was dreaming about all the lightning and thunder we caught that night, nighty night Lea! I would like to thank my chase buddies Pierre-Marc, Mathieu, Jeff, Alain and Benoit for their input about conditions and nowcasting! It's not always easy, but you guys helped out a whole lot!

Welcome Storm Chasing enthousiast!!!

2005-09-01T10:55:00.000-04:00

Welcome storm chasing enthousiast!!! Well finally an english page dedicated to my storm chasing activities!!! It's about time!!!! Hope you will enjoy this blog and do not hesitate to leave your comments!!! In the coming days I will be uploading my 2005 storm chasing activities and other weather news, so come back often!! Cheers to all!