Supercell releases violent microburst & possible tornado

MOVIE CLIPS:

Date	Location/Description (right-click links to download movie)	Size
July 24, 1999	St. Catharines - Funnels forming over lake from tornadic supercell.	1mb
July 24, 1999	St. Catharines - Over lake, beginning the chase.	2mb
July 24, 1999	St. Catharines/NOTL - chasing into NOTL	1mb
July 24, 1999	NOTL - turning around after taking the wrong road	350kb
July 24, 1999	NOTL - caught in violent microburst of tornadic supercell	959kb
July 24, 1999	NOTL - lightning clips from same storm	1mb
July 24, 1999	NOTL - sunset and another meso coming across lake	906kb

The Weather Network posted watches & warnings all day long:

Still photos!  These images were taken on Lakeshore Rd, Niagara-on-the-Lake, around 8:20pm, facing East.
Click thumbnail below for full-sized image:

 Click here to e-mail me about any comments/suggestions about this storm!

    Well, this was such an active and photogenic storm that I had to break it up into 4 individual pages...  the video capture pages are listed here, but please take the time to read this page as it will give you useful information on the pictures!
 

    The day started off with Environment Canada releasing severe thunderstorm watches for almost all of Ontario.  In fact, the entire province WAS under a severe t-storm warning except for the Niagara and Toronto areas.  CAPE values were over 3400 in some places, and lifted indexes down to -10 !   (Click here for CAPE image map , and  Click here for Lifted Index map ) As the afternoon came, these watches were upgraded to severe thunderstorm warnings, and these warnings were soon upgraded to tornado warnings in many places.  Doppler showed cells exploding violently from the Windsor area, as well as the Georgian Bay area.   Click here for doppler image and  Click here for radar summary (6:45pm)  and  Click here for 7:29pm lightning map.  Eventually Environment Canada issued a severe t-storm watch for Niagara, which was soon upgraded to a severe t-storm warning, which was then upgraded to a tornado warning.  The times of issues are listed here for Niagara:

    The clouds built up quickly staring around 7:15pm, and by 8pm there was significant cloud-to-cloud (CC) lightning cloud-to-ground (CC) lightning, and the odd anvil crawler.  Thunder was minimal.  I grabbed all my gear together and packed it into the car.  I filmed the cloud formations from within my house as the built up over the lake, producing many cloud lowerings, and 3 funnel clouds (one of which I managed to get on tape).

    My friend Jeff and his fiancee called me on his cell phone around 8pm to tell me of the cloud build-up around Hamilton (he was on the QEW on his way back to St. Kitts).  He arrived at my place around 8:20 and we headed straight out to Niagara on the Lake (NOTL).  Classic supercell was fully developed as it hit land in NOTL and it began to cross straight over us.  We weren't 10 minutes into the chase when we were caught in the strongest microburst I've ever been in as we were forced to come to a dead stop on Lakeshore Rd in NOTL.  It came out of absolutely no precipitation, and got to the point where there was 0 visibility, the wind/rain was so intense I had to turn the car into the wind for fear of it rolling.  Lots of debris in the air and being whipped across the street.  All cars came to a dead halt in the middle of the street except for one or two who panicked and tried to push forward to shelter, only to drive on and off of the shoulders as they couldn't see where they were going.

    The microburst lasted about 3 minutes, and after it subsided we head back to St. Kitts and found a large tree (measured to be 14" in diameter at the base where it snapped) that had fallen and taken out the power lines, which were strewn across the street (Cindy Dr., off Arthur St.).  As soon as we stopped to get it on video the Fire Dept. rounded the corner and blocked off the street.  We head back to the rural areas of NOTL and got some great lightning footage.

    The next day I went to work and the entire parking lot was littered with tree branches and leaves.  All the side roads were littered with tree debris as well.  Many reports of tornados across the province, as well as damage.  The reports to Environment Canada are as follows:

A COLD FRONT TRACKED ACROSS SOUTHERN ONTARIO THIS AFTERNOON. SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE HAS BEEN REPORTED FROM MANY LOCALITIES ACROSS THE REGIONS. SEVERE THUNDERSTORM AND TORNADO WATCHES AND WARNINGS WERE ISSUED BEGINNING JUST AFTER 10 AM THIS MORNING AND PRECEEDED ALL EVENTS BY SEVERAL HOURS.

A SELECTION OF THE SEVERE WEATHER EVENTS FROM SATURDAY JULY 24 FOLLOWS. ALL TIMES ARE IN UNIVERSAL COORDINATED TIME AND CAN BE CONVERTED TO EDT BY SUBTRACTING 4 HOURS.

EVENT TIME : 1999 /7 /24 : 23:35
LOCALE :  VALENTIA , PETERBOROUGH AND THE KAWARTHAS
EVENT DESC : HEAVY WINDS BENDING TREES OVER, ESTIMATED AT 80 KM/H