Last Saturday looked like there could be a possibility of waterspouts over Lake Michigan. I checked over all the data, and even the forecasts discussions pointed to a possibility of waterspouts.

I then proceeded to grab some BUFKIT profiles near the shore of Lake Michigan, and begin my forecasting process. At first I was a little worried about the cloud depth, as it didn't look great, but as the days got closer, it got better-but not as great as it could be. Luckily BUFKIT has a lake effect setting to set water temps (which I grabbed off the NOAA GL Forecast) and then it gives you your surface temp to H85 temp split, or delta-t. Two days before last Saturday, I became more worried about the winds, as they showed 20-30kts.

All forecasting aside, I headed up to Muskegon to look for waterspouts, but busted. I'm going to assume the winds were too strong, and undercut any stretching of vertical vorticity. I recorded 21mph sustained winds and a 32.6mph gust-all over 4 hours.

Event Summary:

An MCS pushed ENE-ward through Missouri, and Illinois, and had a few embedded supercells in it, and was dropping tornadoes left and right.

At least two were confirmed in central Illinois. A small town of Williamsville, IL also got hit, where some houses were destroyed as well as a convenience/gas station. It seemed to be pick and choose, as I counted as many as four distinct rotations at one time. It was all just a matter of which storm the chasers wanted to choose.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home doing some hefty armchair chasing, and watching these embedded supercells in high resolution through GRLevel2 AE. I notice some crazy rotation just about to hit Williamsville, so I check the NROT values, and they are at 2.0+.

A yellow TVS then pops up, which showed a NROT of ~2.0 at 800ft! You will see in some of the pictures below how pronounced this rotation was.I've also created an animated image of SRV in 3D, where you can clearly see the tornado, which lasted for many scans.

Large cells had exploded in IA that morning, and were headed our way. My Dad and I left around 5:30PM and went towards Kalamazoo on I-94. The squall line that had just come ashore didn't look very impressive on radar. I looked at the velocities, and noticed the storm coming ashore near Grand Haven. We didn't have much time, so we quickly headed toward Grand Rapids.

Just north of Grand Rapids, it began to get really windy. Trees were blowing like crazy, and you could hear the wind hitting the car as we cruised down the road. Debris started to fly across the road, but luckily it was only leaves, and small branches. We were now in the bulk of the storm, but not quite far enough in front like I planned.

I was hoping to get far enough ahead of it for a little bit so I could pull off the road, and get some wind measurements. By the time we could get anywhere remotely in front of the storm, it had started to die out.

This was an interesting chase. I honestly wouldn't have thought about chasing until Ben Holcomb suggested it. I guess I never really looked at the data. Even though this chase was a bust, everything looked good except for one ingredient: instability. The LCL's were insanely low, and SRH was also pretty ridiculous. The NAM and GFS both had forecasted some CAPE in the area, but the RUC refused to show any. We decided since two out of the three models agreed on it, that maybe the RUC was missing something. Well, I guess we learned that the RUC was right, and no CAPE = no storms.

Summary:

Well, not much to say here. Not a bust, but a pretty uneventful chase. A visible outflow boundary formed near KDTX, and ran north and south. I got out a little late, as a cell north of Plymouth, MI crossed over that outflow boundary, and went tornado warned. I decided to head out, and head towards Ann Arbor.

Eventually we headed south out of Ann Arbor, and intercepted a storm that quickly fizzled out. We headed back north, and on the way, DTX issued a tornado warning for the cell just to the east of the one we left. It appeared to be all outflow, and no tornado was ever confirmed, so I'm glad we didn't turn around and go after it.

Heading back north again to try to intercept another cell which appeared to spawn off a cold pool or and OFB from a previous storm, we got stuck in rush hour traffic around Ann Arbor. A small hail core was about to pound us from the north. We finally got moving again, but not quite in time, as we encountered some brief heavy rain, and pea-sized hail.

Summary:

This day was a MDT risk day for severe weather. I left around 2:30 PM, and intercepted a storm just south of Angola, IN. It wasn't very impressive, and nothing interesting was popping up yet. We waited about an hour, and then noticed a storm just north of Rochester. It went tornado warned after a little bit, and we traveled south through Fort Wayne, and intercepted the storm just south of Huntington. The storm wasn't real organized, and we only saw a brief wall cloud. The storm died out, and a large MCS blob was forming on the other side of Lake Michigan. We headed north, and eventually met up with Ben Holcomb in South Bend, IN and continued north where we stopped south of St. Joe to watch the storm come ashore. The lightning show was pretty good, and winds were estimated at about 45mph. After the bulk of it passed, we headed home.

Full Recap:

We left Friday the 19th around 2:30 and headed south on I-69 towards Indiana. The SPC had issued a Moderate risk for severe weather for Ohio, Northern Indiana, Illinois, and extreme Southern Lower Michigan.

Here is a video I found on a MiniDV tape that I had in a box. I shot this video on the shores of Lake Superior at the Munising Tourist Park in Munising, Michigan where I was camping with relatives. This was a pretty rare event, because the Upper Peninsula does not get tornadoes very often. I shot this a few years back, and really had no idea what I was looking at. I was interested in weather at the time, but didn't know much at all. After reviewing this footage since I have gained more knowledge, it really amazes me. The wall cloud is spectacular, and there are numerous funnels in the video, as well as a nice CG which I slowed down in the video.

We were preparing to head to a small restaurant to have dinner, when we noticed the storm over the water. It got really windy, and then a lowering appeared out over the water. It put down a water spout, and literally chased a boat into shore. Unfortunately, I could not find the video on the tape. I must have ran to grab the camcorder sometime after the waterspout. I did not have a tripod with me, because this was unexpected, so please try to ignore the shakiness of the video.

Summary:

I left Battle Creek with my Dad, and met up with Andrew Glenn over in Marshall, and headed east towards Jackson. We met up with Andrew Herron around Parma, and continued East towards Jackson, where we went South on US 127. We intercepted a storm just south of Jackson, and witnessed some pretty amazing structure, as well as nice hail shaft. We then continued South again, and decided to intercept a storm just East of Hillsdale. The storm had a nice lowering to it, with a nice inflow tail. We reported it to the NWS, and it went tornado warned shortly thereafter. We followed the storm into Adrian, and it never produced a tornado to our knowledge. It was already dark, so we rode out the storm, and then headed for home.

Full Recap: