Author Archives: Mike R

The cape was high but with the helicity very low so I was not expecting much more than pulses today.
Instead a surprise in the form of a dozen supercells forming over central and Southern Alberta proved again that the computer models are useless.
At first what appeared to be a pulse east of Leduc quickly turned into an LP supercell and turned sharply right, and made a beeline down highway 2A

The storm rapidly intensified in the warm and humid air that was much warmer than was forecast.
The storm passed over Wetaskiwin denting cars all along the auto mile with quarter to loonie sized hail. This ended a 37 day period of minimal thunderstorm activity for the city.

Me and Matt then followed an intense supercell near Camrose even while the first storm was still trucking along. At the peak we had 4 supercells in a 50km radius of our position. Each was discrete and the day was almost perfect.

Though Matt was hoping for some lightning shots the supercells offered some of the best structure of 2013.

Tomorrow:

The helicity and shear is significantly higher for tomorrow, so if the same dynamics as today are in place we can expect potentially viscous supercells with hail in excess of baseball size in some of these storms.
Wind gusts of over 100km/h and microbursts with a concern and the risk is there for tornadoes if lower level shear is stronger.

Models starting to show some consistency for Severe thunderstorms over the next 3 days. Today the storms are isolated to to areas south of the Trans Canada highway. Though good CAPE and helicity exist in the Edmonton area, there is no flow aloft and the storms that do form will be stationary and short lived.

Tomorrow looks to be good in the Red Deer area up towards pigeon lake and Drayon Valley, some last long enough to reach the QE2, they look to cycle south through the evening and likely miss Edmonton to the south..

Wednesday looks to be the best, another mean cold front will slice down in the evining not before temperatures reach the high 20s and dews will rise to 20C. not as humid as last week but the shear is significantly better. I put a slight risk of tornadoes in the Pigeon lake, Stony plain, Morinville areas, the risk is slightly lower to the east and south including Edmonton, areas north of Red Deer, and the Camrose, Wetaskiwin area.

Incredible heat and humidity, humidex rising as high as 46 created some significant instability.

Storms started to explode near Drayton valley, Rimbey, and Buck lake and moved northwest toward the Edmonton area. AlbertaWX was live streaming the first supercell near Winfield. The Storm toonie sized hail and some nice structure including a beautiful back lit funnel cloud, the funnel was well defined and spinning rapidly.
As I(Mike R) was re positioning east I collided with a deer which ended the days chase and could compromise the rest of July as I’m going to need to pay the deductible or possibly get a new car(maybe something more deer proof)

While I have the full coverage with rental i don’t think I want to take this Mitsubishi RVR near a supercell.