Thunderstorms Are Exhilarating!

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My dad was driving me back to college after a weekend at home to visit my brother who is at home on spring break, but we ran into some severe weather just as we entered town. It was great! As we headed to our destination, I could see the huge cumulonimbus off to the west, down the stretch of highway. I could see the extensive anvil of the cloud jutting off to the south and the ominous base of the cloud to the north. The mammatus indicated we were going to be dealing with a nasty storm and not just a normal spring shower. As we drew closer, I could see the wall cloud flanking from the southwest to the northeast. This was a true supercell thunderstorm, which have a one-in-four chance of producing tornadoes.

As we exited from the highway going into town, I could see fast-moving, low-lying scud clouds that were maybe three or four tall tree heights above the ground (that's low!). One of these protusions appeared to be a rotating funnel cloud rather than a detached cumulus cloud. We drove right under it, briefly heard what must have been a tornado siren, and immediately entered a patch of pea-to-golfball-sized hail for less than a minute before leaving the worst the of the storm. Apparently, a trained tornado spotter saw a funnel cloud in a different part of town about seven minutes later. Doplar radar indicated possible tornadoes or funnel clouds in many locations in the area. A cold front of more strong-to-severe thunderstorms is about two hundred miles away as I write this at 8:00 P.M. C.S.T.!

i'm jealous.

Ooooh...I'm jealous too. Something somewhat similar happened to me once, when my mom and sister and I were driving home along the freeway. A massive thunderstorm (I'm pretty sure it was a supercell as well) had broken out; it was at night and quite spectacular and beautiful as the lightening was intense and lit up parts of the clouds. It began hailing and raining heavily for awhile, a lot of the cars had pulled over to the sides or gotten off the freeway and we were only going about thirty miles an hour. After a few minutes, we heard on the radio that there was a tornado watch going into effect in the southern part of the county we lived in in about 10 minutes, and it just so happened that we were only about 10 minutes from the county line coming in from the south, so we got off the nearest exit and waited it out at a gas station. Man, was that ever exciting. Turns out no tornado touched down (I used to live right by Lake Michigan, so tornadoes tend to lose their strength when they get close to us) which was good since it was such a heavily populated area (although I've gotta admit, I've always wanted to see one), but there was some wind damage.

I ran into tennis ball sized hail and 60mph winds once while chasing down a storm two years ago on july 13th that spawned a tornado which did a lot of damage. The bottom of the storm was spinning like a top. I never saw anything so wicked looking before in my life.

I managed to catch a glimpse of the tornado for 30 seconds before is dissapated.

My vehicle has all kinds of dents in it now.

Those same storms seem to be on their way to me. A tornado watch was just issued.

The supercell is still going strong nearly five hours later! Now it's over in central Illinois and looks even stronger on the radar. You can also see a new batch of thunderstorms lined up about to strike here.

I love thunderstorms too, unfortunately mostly wildfires around here.

I'm jealose too I get almost a buzz from bad weather (I think its the pressure change) and feel complelled to go were I can see it best. Never saw a tornado but years ago there was one not far from were I was living but I slept through it. I had a severe migrine and took medicine to sleep woke up looked out the window it was pitch black I figure it was 4am a not pm and went back to sleep The next day I had to take several detours on my way to work becuse of downed trees didnt think anything of it till I heard on the radio the National Guard was on its way to patrol an area not far from were I lived.

I thought nasty storms were normal for Missouri... Tornado valley. I think up to ten had been spotted last night. I fell asleep of course and took no precautions whatsoever. Of course, being on the top floor of an apartment building with the bathroom as my only protection, I figured there wasn't a great deal of difference between that and my bedroom.

And I had a very nice sleep indeed.

I've always been a weather nut, and have always wanted to see a tornado or a supercell. Im so jealous Neat!!

maybe i should become a storm chaser..

Carry a digital camera in future so you can take a photograph for any potential storms for us.

Extreme weather is great! I like to sit out on the screened in porch beside my house and watch the thunderstorms during the summer. It's amazing the power of nature!

I too love a good, violent thunderstorm. Never lived in tornado country.

I love storms when they're about to start or are in full blast. I don't like when it's clearing up.

The most violent storms give me nightmares (Tornado churners) and I never want a storm that violent.. athough there was one here not long ago.. a tornado dropped in Te Puke, which is about 3/4 hour from here.

I too absolutely love intense storms, what a rush they are. I live in California, so the storms aren't as intense as the midwest, but I can still get some decent storm chasing in during the summer when the storms form over the desert. In fact, a very odd hobby that I have is chasing dust devils, which are like mini tornados. I guess you could say I'm quite obsessed with dust devils, they seem to have a life of their own. Not too long ago I created a short movie while chasing them, which you can see here:

http://www.animalu.com/pics/dd1.htm

and check out this guys amazing storm images:

http://www.extremeinstability.com/imagesbyyear.htm

and my favorite place to keep up with the latest storm chases:

http://www.k5kj.net/news.htm#2005


Jeff

Like this....



I was at my bosses house when they showed this storm on radar. It was nasty looking on the TV, but in this picture it looks pretty benign.



A few minutes later I spied this off to the south west, about the same time a tornado warning was issued for where I was. Exposure time on this picture was 1 second with 200 speed film through a 150mm f/4 zoom lens, it was a lot darker out than it looks



So I drove south about 10 miles or so to see what the fuss was, this is what I ran into. You classic rotating supercell thunderstorm



Starting to spin really fast, like a top.



Really getting intense now. Rain then started to wrap itself around the meso as the storm went high precip. About five minutes after this picture, it produced a tornado that was on the ground for 5 miles and destroyed a bunch of houses.



Fifteen miles southeast of the above picture after the tornado and the storm was starting to weaken as it moved out over lake michigan.