Subject: SVR WEATHER Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 12:49:06 -0400 (EDT) I think that we finally got lucky up here, that is for Severe Weather. So much went on here, I somewhat went out chasing in New York State yesterday afternoon between Elmira and Ithaca. I pulled over at a truck stop and luckily they had the Weather Channel on, so I watched the radar and noticed that one cell was headed for right where I was. So I got im my car and sat out in the parkinglot ( for a better point of view) You could see the sky getting extremely dark and the out of the darkness, you could see the white lower clouds of the gut front moving at about 40-50 mph. Then as taht passed the winds picked up to about 40-50 mph and torrential downpours occured for about another 10 minutes, then some quarter sized hail began to fall and not long after that it cleared out, but the weather channel was showing another cell moving right toward me again, just a little further north, so I drove north toward Watkins Glen, and here I saw the most impressive lightning I have ever seen. It was so close that I could see it hit the ground. It was all around me, but as I was driving the rain intensified and the winds picked up, and then suddenly hit an area that had no rain, light winds and I could see the clouds racinig by me, but I could see no signs of a funnel. So I continued to drive and got back into the heavy rain. This is at 6:00 pm. The storm washen passing so I decided to drive east toward Ithaca and got on the back edge of the stratiform precipitaion, but the lightning was still going strong. But as I was driving around the central Finger Lakes region, I noticed numerous trees down in the road and many homes burning candles. Mnay of the radio stations were nocked out. The sun finally peaked through for a nice rosy sunset. At this thime the sky was filled with huge bulging mammatus clouds. On my way home today, I noticed again numerous areas of wind damage from the Finger Lakes into Northern Pennsylvania. The Buffalo WSO issued over 40 warnings, which was their record. In the Binghamton area, the normal number of tornados in the area is about 2-4 yesterday there were 10 confirmed in the BGM area. A tornado hit downtown Binghamton and hit one of the local TV station, WIVT, ABC. The entire station was destroyed. They lost 3 satellites, the building was severly damaged along with much of thier equipment. They are still off the air, probably until Wednesday. They local tv staion got some footage of one of the tornados as it touched down. These torndoes wiped out entire building complexes and are being ranked preliminary F2's. So busy busy night last night, but very exciting. Oh, and happy hurricane season !! Bryan