amazing second chance

8:55 pm day 2

so first off, let me tell you about what we saw earlier today. we got to medicine hat and knew we had to be quick. a short lunch stop and data download showed us that our original target of near calgary was bang on.

the toronto chasers were already there.

quoth napoleon dynamite, "lucky!"

what can i say? it was a supercell. a right-moving, hook echo, fast rotation honest to goodness supercell.

and we were there.

wall cloud, intense rotation, hangy-downy thingies, the whole shebang. i hope that within a day or so i can upload some pictures that come close to doing it justice. in a word, awesome.

after a while (too short a while, if you ask me), the outflow from the storm cut off the updraft. the storm went kapoof and it looked like we were done for the day.

lucky us, as we were driving along the road, off in the distance were some really odd-looking vans. it was college of dupage!!!

we pulled over and introduced ourselves. well, not myself and wxdog, as we knew the instructor and one of the drivers already. but we hung out for a few minutes and talked about the supercell, tossing aroud ideas of what caused the storm to die.

the cod people pulled away to go see if they could catch some hail (we don't actually own the vans, thank you very much) and we went onward.

a little bit down the road we needed an urgent pit stop, as a bladder was running close to defcon-1. but i won't mention who it was. ;P

we stopped in three hills for a data stop and gas-up. and who pulls in, but none other than the college of dupage people. small world.

people were gathering food and i was gathering information. good move on both our parts.

a storm appeared to be right-moving near red deer, and so we decided to move north just to have a look-see.

good move again.

there was a circular updraft off to our northwest. and when i say circular, i mean it looked like a circle.

about 4000 pictures later, another one formed. circular, and it had some scud being sucked up into it.

and another one formed, and another and another. seriously, there were about 5 of them all at once.

we followed them along, and are currently stopped by the side of the road. a local farmer was here, and he liked to talk.

lots more pictures later, and we're about to set off for kindersley. thunder and lightning are all around us, and darkness is falling. it's my turn to drive. (it has been since medicine hat.)

so i'll sign off for now. like i said, hopefully the pictures will be uploaded soon.

great day!!! :D