Chase team:  myself, friend Jeff, brother Chris
Chase time: ~3 hours
Chase vehicle:  extended cab pick-up truck
Chase distance: 30km

    Jeff and myself got back from the bars in Port Dalhousie (an area in the north end of St. Catharines) around 2am.  As we were driving back Jeff said he noticed a lot of flashes coming from the distance.  I told him it was lights from the bars and such.
Anyways, we walked down to the lake (Lake Ontario, across the street from my house) to a park there and noticed that it was indeed lightning.  It was incredible.  Sheet lightning (clouds lighting up) along with many CGs going from the clouds to the water.  Seeing that this storm was going to put on quite a show for us I ran home, grabbed the camera, tripod, and camcorder, and returned to the park.

    As the storm approached the lightning grew even more intense.  Flashes were anywhere from 1 to 5 per second, continuously!  Jeff was filming on the camcorder and I was taking shots with the camera when my brother came down and decided to watch with us.  All of a sudden Jeff announced that he thought he saw a funnel cloud lowering from a very thick group of clouds to our east (towards Niagara-On-The-Lake).  I looked and when lightning illuminated  that area of cloud from the back there was indeed a definate "V" shaped lowering from the cloud base, and it continued inland towards the town of NOTL.  I snapped off a roll of film, returned home and re-filled the camera, grabbed a new battery for the camcorder and returned.  When I got back to the park where Jeff and Chris were, the lightning was unbelievable.  I set up the tripod and continued to take pictures when all of a sudden the wind just went crazy.  The tripod blew over, Jeff started getting anxious to return to his truck, so he and my brother returned home leaving me by myself.  So here I am in a park on a hill overlooking the lake with my tripod, 100+ km/hr (estimated) wind gusts and lighting flashing above and all around me.  Still no rain at this point!

    I returned home where Jeff and Chris were waiting at Jeff's truck and we decided to follow the storm into NOTL (Niagara-on-the Lake).  We headed east down Lakeshore Rd, over the Welland Canal, and into the town of NOTL.  At this point it was still a dry storm.  Just as we started entering the farming areas of the town it started pouring. It was so intense that the rain was -pushing- through the cracks of the sunroof into the truck and leaking inside!  We crawled along at 20km/hr because we couldn't see 10 feet in front of us.  We could actually turn off the headlights and drive just from the illumination of all the lightning.  LOTS of branches down, and leaves/twigs covered good portions of the road in some areas.  The wind became so intense at one point that one of the windshield wipers on the truck literally blew off.  We made it to downtown NOTL (usually a very picturesque place which attracts tens of of thousands of visitors a year).  COMPLETELY black.  Street lights were out, traffic lights, etc... and we were surrounded by intense lighting.  We were the only car on the road during our entire chase!  Even downtown NOTL was empty of people and cars.  So, we decided we were in the middle of it and needed a good place to view the storm from.  We found a wooden gazebo located right on the lake and ran to it (getting soaked in the 5 second run) and setup the cameras there.  Although the thunder was very loud continuously, there was one -massive- crack that made us all jump.  A tree was struck a couple hundred feet away ('got a picture of the tree). This was our second close call with lightning - on our way into town lightning hit a tree that we were passing, maybe 20-30 feet away.

    Anyways, whether or not the funnel touched down was undecided, although there was a track of localized damage along a portion of Lakeshore Rd. going into the town of NOTL.  'Probably just from wind gusts...  I ran out of my 3rd roll of film and we had practically killed the second battery in the camcorder so we decided to return home (in the dark, all the lights were out now).

    As we came back to the Welland Canal bridge, we noticed it was STUCK!  It was about 10 feet off the ground and was neither lifting nor lowering!  As a joke I got out of the truck, stepped under the gate that tells cars to stop while the bridge raises, walked up to the bridge and tried to 'pull' it back down (yah, right, an 10,000 ton metal/concrete bridge - but it was funny to watch).

    So basically we saw the most intense lightning I've seen in my lifetime, a couple funnel clouds, and some downed trees.  All pictures that turn out from this storm will be back in the SPECIFIC STORMS area of these pages.  My video captures from the camcorder can all be seen HERE .

The day after:
(We were damn lucky... I saw on the news today that 2 people were struck and killed by this lightning that we were out standing in for over an hour...)