Alberta Foothills Weather

Still waiting for the big show. Or some sort of show.
Warmer weather hasn’t been enough to get any monsters going around here, but Ma Nature has been threatening to do something. A few nice cells have brewed up to the north and south, but all the ingredients for a big long lived grimmy have not been able to come together, yet.

Yesterday looked good, then bad, then good again. Right on cue the foothills lit up after lunch, but what they were serving was warm at best and everything fizzled out early. Just as the sun was going down there was a little flareup west of Red Deer that gave them a good wash as it passed by and gave us folks to the west a beautiful display of mammatus on the backside. Then more lit up to the north. Then a few to the south, then there was electrical mayhem in both directions for a good hour. I chose north before the south started, which tuned out to be the poor move of the day.
Wanting to get just a little bit closer for a few nice lightning shots, I found myself in the core of it sitting on a hill north of Sylvan Lake with the lightning overhead. Not so great for photos. Took off east to try to get ahead, but could never get far enough ahead, stop and pull the camera out than the rain would be there. Go south. Giant tower crawling bolts spewing out of something down there but looking for a pic to the north. Find a spot, no rain, set up, and that’s the end of the north show. Really?? pffft
Things were still cooking down south so I headed toward home where I would have had a pretty good view of it to start with, and it decides to stop down there too as soon as I get a bit better view. Turns out it was down around Airdrie, and Anthony who wisely stayed home, said he got a fantastic show down there. Looked good from Sylvan Lake!

Today was a interesting day. Pretty good setup for some severe if only a few parameters had lined up, which they did not. Nice and warm, just shy of 25C with dews at 12-14. Towers started to boil up before noon out in the hills, but never had any support upstairs. South or SE winds pushing against the hills could only build one smokestack type cell today. It sat out there all afternoon sucking up everything it could suck from the southeast, lifting it up and spewing it out the top in a long anvil all the way into Saskatchewan. Never got very big, but had a top pushing 40k feet for a lot of it’s life, which came to an end abruptly when it came out of the hills.
Saw three orphan anvils from that cell earlier in the afternoon as it was chugging along over the lumps out west. More strange stuff to add to the pile.