The local storm chase(s) on August 19, 2001 were some of the most
successful in my career, all told, and the storms that day were better
than any since June 2, 1998 here in central Pennsylvania, home of
WeatherMatrix HeadQuarters.
In this report:
Graphs from the WeatherMatrix HQ WeatherStation which saw 15 degree drop
and an inch of rain in 15 minutes, weird pressure rises and falls, and
heavy lightning.
Video captures of rainbows, lightning, severe flooding, and a beautiful
gust front. Also local newspaper stories and scans, all at:
http://www.weathermatrix.net/2001/0819/
This chase was a very successful one for me, probably the best since the
5/29, 5/31, 6/2 outbreak of 1998. This was because of a number of
reasons. Sure I didn't see a tornado, but I saw the first hail on a
chase in PA, two rainbows, a wall cloud, a beautiful gust front, major
flooding, and trees down. For Central PA, you can't beat that.
Contributing factors:
1. We had a decent severe weather day with both a supercell and a bow
echo passing over WeatherMatrix HQ and surrounding areas. Supercells are
very rare in Central PA, in fact I had only seen one or two days in the
past four years. Bow echos / squall lines are more common, but still you
only get a couple of these per year. To have both on the same day in the
same place is a lucky opportunity.
2. It was Sunday - I had no work or any plans to get in the way
3. It was Sunday - there was no traffic, it's impossible to get out of
town at 5pm on a weekday and that's always when the storms come :)
4. I spent enough time getting my equipment together BEFORE the chase,
the weatherradio, lightning detector, etc, and setting up the radio
scanner which proved invaluable in leading me to damage areas and
getting live storm reports. I tested out the hands-free cell phone set
($15 on clearance at Wal-Mart) which proved to work VERY well as I could
take and make calls the whole time, getting status and weather updates
from other chasers. The SAME weather-radio had new batteries and
actually went off for most of the warnings & watches despite bad
reception.
5. I brought along the mobile Internet access for the first time. If
you've never tried this, it is a GODSEND. Chasing in Pennsylvania is
hard because of bad sky visibility, bad roads, mountains that you can't
get around, and lack of internet access on the road. You get an hour out
and you have no idea what's going on and there's no way to get radar
data except to call NWS or someone and have them try to describe the
storms to you every 5 minutes. I had color radars on my PDA every 5
minutes for the entire chase. The wireless coverage area of the service
fades in NW PA which I was a little worried about but I ended up never
getting out of the county anyway.
PDA: http://athome.compaq.com/showroom/static/iPAQ/handheld.asp
SERVICE: http://www.omnisky.com
--
================================================================
Jesse Ferrell - Meteorologist/Web Dev. - jesse{at}weathermatrix.net
WeatherMatrix |||| http://www.weathermatrix.net/ |||| ICQ 136832
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