June 6
Since the last post, we have had three drops of rain and one rumble of thunder off in the distance.
Not so for the rest of the province. Just about everyone else in Alberta has has a thunderstorm or two pass over this week, with some good ones out in the Drayton Valley-Whitecourt area yesterday.
A strange week of basically sitting in the doldrums with no real flow. Weak flow moved in from the west for the first few days but was blown away by a rude southwest surface flow, pinning everything against the mountains. Then a few day of complete disorganization, with storms forming at random all over the place from sunny spots and outflow boundaries of other dying storms.
Today was another strange one. Look to the south and everything was speeding east, look north and it was all speeding west, with us in the middle under a low gray deck and a cold(10C) west wind.
Around 6pm, a storm brewed up near Stettler, moving northwest. At 7:04pm the warnings started coming out:
WWCN16 CWWG 070104
SEVERE WEATHER BULLETIN
ISSUED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA
AT 7:04 PM MDT FRIDAY 6 JUNE 2008.
———————————————————————
WATCHES/WARNINGS IN EFFECT FOR NORTHERN ALBERTA…
TORNADO WARNING FOR:
=NEW= CAMROSE COUNTY NEAR BAWLF AND ROSALIND.
SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS HAVE DEVELOPED RAPIDLY NEAR STETTLER AND ARE HEADING WEST NORTHWEST AT 15 KM/H. THERE WERE REPORTS OF TORNADO TOUNCHED DOWN 5 MILES EAST OF HEISLER BETWEEN HIGHWAY 854 AND 856. THIS TORNADO IS HEADING EAST NORTHEAST AT 15 KM/H.
Over the next hour, lots of severe thunderstorm warnings west of Edmonton and tornado watches all the way down to Innisfail. By 9:15 it was all over. All the watches/warnings are condensed into a text file here.
GlobalTv Edmonton ran some footage of what appeared to be a landspout kicking up some dirt in a field with a thin rope extending up into the clouds, and an interview with a farmer who had the twister tear up a corral.
Here’s a radar image from minutes before the warning and a few screen caps from tonight’s news footage of the spinup.
According to the SPC’s mesoanalysis earlier today, Southern Alberta had SBCAPE values of 5000 to 10,000 J/kg. I found this funny, considering in Calgary at the time the temperature was only 9 degrees.
The CAPE has now been revised, and is only 250J/kg, bit of a mistake there!
There is a severe thunderstorm watch out for that area now, but I doubt the apocalyptic CAPE values had anything to do with it!
June 7th, 2008 at 2:31 pmprettey nice thunderstorm blew through airdrie from the east around 1pm. Some good cracks of thunder, never located any lightning, picked up another 7mm in 25minutes. Another strong line trying to push west, but going more sw from Stlettler to almost strathmore. Hard to imagine too much severe weather when its 10c at the surface.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:38 pmGot rattled out of bed at 5:30 this morning, 15 mm of rain to about 8am.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:54 pmWatching that mess out by Stettler and may have to head east for a look.
Stiff NW wind here and stuff moving in all directions overhead so I guess there is some shear there
I would head out PB. Rotation on radar shows that there might be another possible landspout. Also it appears that a couplet is developping..Pretty interesting, i’ll keep watching..I think EC needs to put out a tornado watch.
June 7th, 2008 at 3:04 pmVery interesting weather out there today. That area in a Wetaskiwin, Stettler, Red Deer triangle has been the focus for some surprisingly powerful thunderstorms. With temperatures and dewpoints in the low to mid teens, it is a very impressive event.
I hope some we see some good picture of this, I would be curious to see what 3 inches of hail looks like!
June 7th, 2008 at 9:35 pmyep, a bizarre day again
June 7th, 2008 at 11:44 pmI have no idea what caused that thing to park in one spot for hours.
As far as melon scratchers go, it’s a honeydoodle.
For me anyway.
Well Mike W. and Ryan Keller went out to chase the storm. They came back with extrordinairy photos, and videos of the wall cloud. Everything will be up by tomorrow and can be found on our site. (Click name for the site) Anyway its been a long day, I’m going to head for bed.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:07 am