busy night!

last night a tornadic supercell just missed lethbridge, ab, and moved to the east-northeast, crossing the border into saskatchewan near schuler. it continued to produce severe weather, eventually morphing into a bow echo with maximum measured winds of 150 km/h! there was apprently quite a bit of damage in leader, sk from these winds. as well, there was baseball- to softball-sized hail in eastern alberta.

which wasn't my target area.

i wasn't chasing, however. paul and the college of dupage crew were chasing.

we talked this morning about target areas, and we all agreed that western sk, west of swift current, would be the place to be. well, we were wrong. the huge supercell began in south-central alberta and didn't allow for anything else to take over.

when i talked to paul last night, he and the crew were on their way back to regina with their tails between their legs. they had expected, like we at the office had, that storms would fire up even more vigourously in the convergent area near maple creek. we were wrong.

paul was near tears.

i mean, our mantra here is that severe weather is bad. and it is. but really, we're here to chase and see beautiful thunderstorms, the most beautiful of which, to me, are supercells.

but severe weather does bad things. personally i'm not a big fan of being caught in an 80 knot wind gust or being pummeled by softball-sized hail. (and yes, both of those things have happened to me!) this could lead to an aside about how i can be happy to see a beautiful storm structure when that same structure can cause so much grief. well, you can check out what chuck doswell has to say about it, because i wholeheartedly agree with him. but in a nutshell, i can't change the fact that severe weather is coing to happen. i can therefore contribute to the safety of others by safely viewing these storms and warning others as to their whereabouts and what they're likely to do. it's just a side bonus that i find them so beautiful. ;)

last night i was hoping to get work done on thursday's presentation about the miller technique. but i was too busy interpreting radar signatures, giving advice on bulletins, and taking severe weather reports. so if i don't have it done in time, now you know why. ;)

i just feel so badly for paul. 4 trips this year and not a single tornado yet.

i think he's starting to believe that there's no such thing as tornadoes.

would that make it the tornado claus(e) or the non-tornado claus(e)? :)