Storm Chasing on a Monday Evening…
They were forecasting thunder showers today, but nothing severe. Then around 7:00 PM, these clouds rolled in, out of the blue…
For a second, I thought we were gonna have a tornado.
(That would have been SO COOL…I’ve always wanted to see one!)
As luck would have it, we ended up with just a garden-variety thunderstorm.
There was a fantastic rainbow afterward…a beautiful double rainbow (with a third one starting starting to repeat itself inside the first one.) It lasted well over 30 minutes, I’ve never seen anything like it. It was the best rainbow I’ve experienced in 25 years.
You’ll have to take my word for it, though. That’s when my camera battery died.
Chalk it up as another fun evening in the Splat Creek Valley.
Tags: rainbow, severe weather, storm chasing, thunderstorm, tornado
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June 17, 2008 at 3:41 am
These are fantastic!! I actually love storms. I think it’s the ions.
June 17, 2008 at 3:52 am
Awesome storm clouds. Thanks for sharing the pictures.
June 17, 2008 at 4:03 am
@Janice and Patrica
There were really weird clouds…I was sure something “interesting” was gonna happen. Like I said, I always wanted to see a tornado.
@Janice
What kind of ions? Positive, or negative?
I’m more into bosons myself!
June 17, 2008 at 2:30 pm
We’ve seen a lot of those clouds here in the midwest over the last month. We were planning a Father’s Day cookout on Sunday and my sister called and said “they think it mght rain.
I said”and that would be different then any of the last 20 days how???”
Amazingly it didn’t rain. Must have headed up to you Friar!
We are now on our second day of perfect blue sky weather. It’s a miracle.
June 17, 2008 at 3:23 pm
@Wendi
The way the weather patterns work here, is they comes from the Midwest and Michigan..crosses lake Huron, and blow into Ontario.
We basically get the weather that you guys get within 1-2 days. For all I know, this could have been your same Fathers’ Day storm cloud!
June 17, 2008 at 4:05 pm
WOW!!! Awesome pics!! I love storms. I miss watching the extreme weather programs on TLC. (We cut off TV last year.)
June 17, 2008 at 4:06 pm
PS. I’m sorry!! I can’t help it…
You have a typo in your subtitle under your blog name.
June 17, 2008 at 4:23 pm
@Steph
Aww…you poor people (I like my TV too much to cut it off). But on You-Tube, there are some awesome tornado videos.
PS. Thanks for that reminder about the typo. (I have a mental block and I constantly mis-spell “mabye-mabye”.
June 17, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Friar,
How gorgeous. I took some a couple of days ago of a crazy storm we had, just before it got almost frightening, but I didn’t get anything like those. I got grey muck. I love the motion in your clouds. Very cool.
When I lived in Rochester, NY (other side of the lake from you Ontarians) we used to get amazing rainbows all the time. I wonder if the lake causes some kind of a rainbow effect like it causes lake effect snows?
Regards,
Kelly
June 17, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Oh, the trans-fats! You’ll need a new race to run.
June 17, 2008 at 5:18 pm
@Kelly
It was just pure luck I had my camera in the car from the fishing trip the day before. I’ve hardly ever seen clouds like this..I was totally blown away.
The rainbow was awesome. I stood there for 20 minutes and watched in from a parking lot at the grocery store. One of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in months. Meanwhile people came and went, and did their shopping. Maybe spending 10 seconds to look.
Pretty sad..when you think of it. (What is WRONG with people..have they gotten so jaded and busy they stopped noticing things like this?)
PS. Trans-fats. Yes! (It’s always good to change my tag-line).
PPS. I’m going tomorrow to the Big City to see a sports doctor. There was a cancellation..I got in at the last minute. I feel like I won the freaking lottery.
June 17, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Friar,
I am so glad. Believe it or not, I was worried about the damage running (walking, limping…) around on that injury would cause! Shame on that silly system! Whatever happened to bribery??
Re: Rainbows, YES. Last summer my parents had an awesome triple rainbow over the mountains they live across from. Not only did we all stand around gaping, kids included, until the last bit was gone, but my parents went and knocked on the doors of guests so they wouldn’t miss it. So there was a line of people all across the front of the motel, oohing and ahhing. And me without my camera, but what a memory it is!
They’re in the hospitality business, and folks are generally relaxed there, so let’s compare… We had a pretty nice one here in DE a couple of years ago (double, and you couldn’t see it all, but we never get rainbows here so it was worth staring at). I stopped the car in a lot and my daughter and I got out to look. Several people stopped to see if something was wrong (nice), and when we pointed, every one said the equivalent of “mmpfh” and drove on. If my tire’s busted you’ll stop but if you could have a blissful moment being one with nature you’re outta here?
Mmpfh to that.
Go get fixed up, and have a nice Harvey’s burger while you’re there. All better.
Until later,
Kelly
June 17, 2008 at 8:59 pm
@Kelly
Ugh. Dont’ want to bitch, but I’m really sore today.
Well, my appt. is just to see the sports doctor. Depending on what he says, than it’s off to see the specialist. Which can take 3-4 months just to get an audience.
If it’s confirmed I need a procedure (I hope not), I’ll be lucky to have it done within a year from now. So I might be limping around like this till next summer…
Unleass I was a hockey player…then they’ll whisk me right through the process.
I would LOVE to pay extra (out of my own pocket) and get treated quicker. But that’s not allowed in Canada….Doctors arent’ even set up to be able to do this. You see, paying for any kind of health care here is ILLEGAL.
Hmmmmm…on a cheerful note….Harvey’s sounds GOOD!!!
June 17, 2008 at 10:27 pm
@Friar: thanks for the youtube tip! At the same time, AUGH! I’m having such a hard time keeping up with you guys and work and domesticity. I suck at time management! (Well, that and my stupid feeds are still not updating so I have to keep checking on y’all and that wastes time too.)
June 17, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Friar,
There is only one option. You must become a Maple Leaf.
June 18, 2008 at 12:21 am
@Steph
No need to feel rushed to keep up! We’re not going anywhere!
(Maybe I shouldn’t have reminded you about You-Tube…another perfect time-waster!)
@Kelly
Aww….Leafs SUCK! I’d rather be a Montreal Canadien or an Ottawa Senator.
June 18, 2008 at 3:14 am
Friar,
Negative ones, like at the beach…snappy like that… makes me breathe better.
Gorgeous again to look at these pics. We had a bit of wind and storm here today. I played dodge the thunderstorms while painting silks outside. For a little while it was actually 69 outside, instead of 99 degrees. Triple rainbows…ya gotta stop for those.
So what do bosons do that is really cool?
June 18, 2008 at 5:00 am
@Janice
I just like to use the word “boson”, it’s one of my favorites. (I picked that up from an eccentric grad student). It’s a term for a nuclear particle….(including protons and neturons, etc). But I just like to call people bosons..as in “What a BOSON!”. I think it should be adopted into everyday life.
Actually, you have a good point, about negative ions. If I remember my graduate chemistry course, most surfaces tend to have a negative charge.
We could use your summer weather. Dropping to 48F tonight, and it won’t get above 70 for the rest of the week (It’s almost July, for Chrissakes!)
June 18, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Whooo, that is chilly bones billy.
I like a little charged particle here and there…
June 18, 2008 at 11:02 pm
…and in 10 weeks (the end of August) it will start cooling off again, and we’ll have frost by the end of September.
(Dammit..sometimes I wish I lived further south!)
Mabye if we pumped some anions up here from the Gulf….
May 17, 2009 at 9:18 pm
That looks like a severe thunderstorm to me. Those low hanging clouds at the edge is what you call a “shelf cloud”, it usually indicates strong rotation in the storm and may indicate damaging winds and a possible tornado. Yes there may have been something severe but no not really in your area it looks like. lol Nice pictures, I would love to catch something like that someday. I live in Western Oregon, and even we at times have storms like this (we just had one on May 2), but I am not lucky enough to catch it on camera.
May 18, 2009 at 10:47 am
@Timmy
We rarely have tornadoes our this part of Ontario, but they do occasionally happen.
So every time I see a severe storm happenings, I take out my camera and try to grab a photo.
Never seen a tornado. I’ve always wanted to. It’s one of the things I want to do before I die.