News DetailLine of severe storms moving across southeastern SK!
Posted At: July 21, 2007 @ 4:21 PM
Posted By: Reed Timmer
Related Categories: General
As of 4:00 pm CDT, a north-south oriented line of severe thunderstorms was moving eastward across southeast Saskatchewan south of Yorkton. The line was beginning to take on "bow-echo" characteristics, so strong, damaging straight-line winds are likely with these storms. Further development is anticipated northeast of Estevan, in the extreme southeast corner of SK later this afternoon. These storms will have the possibility of developing into supercells, with a very small tornado threat. Shown below is a graphical summary of the current watches/warnings. As of 4:00 pm CDT, all warnings were severe thunderstorm warnings, with no tornado warnings in effect.
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Tornado warning northren sask..
Well thats what they said on tv
That warning is for the Pinehouse Lake area, which is about 50 km NW of La Ronge... way the heck up there in the boonies. Apparently, this warning is based on an actual report of a tornado to EC.
Simon E.
According to The Weather Network, tornado sighted 2:30 p.m. mountain time at Besnerd (Fesner?) Lake in northern Saskatchewan, and it's the same storm that's responsible for the warning right now.
The low-level shear is definitely better further north. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a tornado up there.
Dauphin residents probably want to hide under their stairs. It's in the Brandon radar's cone of silence but it's on the fringe of Woodlands Winnipeg radar. 46000 foot tops.
Looks like the cap is holding over most of southern Sk. The latest RUC does not show much in the way of convective initiation there the rest of the evening. It does have a lone storm developing near the lake region of MB in the next few hours.
It's too bad there are no radars in northern SK
Kinda neat to have an actual report from that far north; I wonder if there's going to be any follow up. I'll ask about it when I get around to contacting the forestry people out there.
In case anyone's interested, there was a big event in the same general region on July 2, 2003 at Narrow Hills Provincial Park; huge blowdown and up to softball sized hail. The edge of the blowdown was only about 100 yards from the edge of the campground, so could of have another Pine Lake type even had things been only a little different!
Just was looking and the flight planning site which you can pull up PIREPS (Pilot Reports) off of. Found this
UACN01 CYVC 212023
WG
UUA /OV CYVC 267029 /TM 2023 /FLUNKN /TP UH1 /RM
PILOT REPORTED TORNADO AT BESNARD LAKE
Probably the source of your Tornado warnings.
Does anyone have any small aircraft handy to chase after these things? I hear that logging roads are a little treacherous and it's hard to see through all the trees (unless they've already been blown down, I guess).
Any reports?
WOW! Thanks for the info Tim!
Getting close to the Arctic Circle!
I've flown through a light thunderstorm in a piper single engine before. Wasn't fun... the wings were flexing and we hit a few downdrafts that were scary to fight out of. I think it's probably safer chasing on the ground.
The storms in northern SK are showing up nicely on satellite.
Let us know if hear any info from EC on that storm Simon!
Nother PIREP from up Thompson MB way.
ACFT LTG DETECTOR SHOWS XTNSV LTG 75NM N OF CYTH BUT FSS SFERICS ON NARDS DISPLAY SHOWS NOTHING AT THIS TIME
Reads: Aircraft Lightning Detector Shows Extensive Lightning 75 Nautical Miles North of CYTH (Thompson) but Flight Service Station [Lightning detectors] on NARDS (Nav Canada Auxilliary Radar Display System - Local Radars at Control Towers) show nothing.
Looks like anyone in that remote area up that end is having an interesting evening.. unfortunately they probably won't see it coming on radar.
We had stronger storms than this last night along the Gulf Coast, but no breaking weather news on tv.net.
We were in the middle of some of the cells that went through the Medicine Hat area late last night and early this morning. We had an inch and 3/10 fo rain in 45min, amazing lightning, damaging winds (ripped apart 4 pivots, uprooted and damaged major swaths of trees) and hail. We lost sataletie and internet connection (the tower was fried) I am wondering were I can get access to some past radar images of this cell. I would really like to see what that bad boy looked like. (We are kind of adicted to watching radar images.....I guess it's a farmer thing :) Any help would be much appreciated.
been a while since someone put up tornado video or pictures on tv.net. :(
I think I captured the first ever funnel over amsterdam...
its sad cause the pics of it that were chosen was when it was roping out...ofcourse the stupid dutch dont know wtf that is...but i caught the beginning of it..kinda amazing cause if was right in front my roof view..anyways click my name :P
Reed or anyone can tell me..is green sky the best warning of a tornado? I had never seen it b4 except 16july ofcourse.....
A green tint to the sky is usually a good indicator of hail, ususally from a strong thunderstorm.
anyone like to chat about global warming or extreme weather come to the chat! @ insaneweather.com
hmmmmmmmm JY ive seen plenty of hail and thunderstorms NEVER did they produce green sky!! soo..
Cors, good short read:
http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa028&articleID=25F743DC-E7F2-99DF-3BB7C05144B603BD
at least as far as i can remember ;)
thx corey does it still read easy
after u had some beers like me :P lol..some ...lol
btw i like scientic american almost as good as nature.. ;)
I dont need to know IF its true I KNOW its true!!! ive seen it! like u prolly ;)
lol idiots i read 3lines and now i think they dont think its true lol LMFAO
I guess I was wrong...I throught the green hue had something to do with the light from the hail... I guess that's something we're going to have to figure out...
New Storm setup in Alberta for Tuesday and Wednesday.
Sask and man on Wed and Thu.
I now that green light is is not as strong as blue an red.
Red being the strongest so it is last to fade at sunset
I could be that hail of rain can trap green light in a storm
JY I just caught my first funnel...so makes me a bit...lol know it all...but lets face it im dutch...wtf do i know.lol
its like over here the weather forecasters are from the stoneage...seriously thx to this site mostly Im pretty sure i know more as most dutch meteorologists..about severe weather. its scary how little they know here...
About the green sky thing - I think something missing from the research presented in that article (thanks Corey!), or at least something I'd like to know, is, wouldn't it be important to know where the observer is in relation to the storm itself, and the position of the sun at the time the green sky is observed? I think everyone who has ever seen a green sky will tell you that it doesn't stay green forever. It doesn't start out green, and after the storm has passed it doesn't stay green. ... I guess what I mean is, would two seperate observers on the same storm, one on the north side and the other on the south side (or east/west) both visually perceive the same storm the same way? I think the answer to that is more than likely "no." ... I'd like to know a lot more about the research those guys did.
I think I'm going with the idea that green skies come from a special set of circumstances that the observer is in the right place to perceive at any given time, not necessarily that certain storms are more likely to display green characteristics. But that's just me ... :D
Oh btw Reed thx to u i was 13most viewed that day(netherlands) and 50most viewed news interenational...lol my shelf cloud vid was the most watched of all...hahaha the dutch chasers must be soo grr....cause their links didnt get near to ur hits..hahaha USA USA USA!
Heidi I always knew u IS smart ;) btw I fav that Yanni kid...
seriously I was almost crying lol sooo amazing! (click name for YANNI!)
oh and yes Heidi you are so right on! from the backside of the storm it doesnt look green at all! I saw that from pics from other side! its funny how factual pics and video are...I guess we're all scientiest experimenting in a way...and thats wot I like about it cause its such an undiscovered terrain ..in a way......if ya know wot i mean ;)
hey cors...congrats man that was no cold weather funnel... did it touchdown?
i have a few pics of the edmonton tornado 20 years ago... the sky was grinch grren lol. heres the link:
http://datalib.library.ualberta.ca/tornado/photo1b.JPG
http://datalib.library.ualberta.ca/tornado/new1a.JPG
http://datalib.library.ualberta.ca/tornado/photo4b.JPG
btw...the third pic was it coming into the trailor park...tilt your hear and go "WOW!" lol.
heidi:
green sky always is in the front of the storm...its sometimes stayds green over head but when ever i have encountered it, it doesnt stay green once its passed...but then again im usually getting hammered with hail and rain the size of watermellons lol. thats been my experience.
ok Dale I start checking them out...now
wow heavy pics Dale did you take em ;)...you sound like a veteran..I must say when the shelf cloud was over my head I was f*ing shaking ...lol u can notice it in the vid :P meh...but I was always watching vids and holy crap its a different ballgame when ur really out there,,,no pause or close vid then lol
oh and that funnel..well I'm starting to think these images I have are kinda special cause I caught the beginning of it when it was wide..have not come across any pics showing that stage...and well..I could well be the first ever funnel above amsterdam..lol and I caught it..hehehehe can u believe it I didnt even chase and there it was in view from my roof...I totally noticed the green sky first..and since I only saw that once b4 16july lol I knew something was up..but really wtf we dont get that stuff here normally! climate shift!
oh and for those who dont think global warming is mostly cause of humans...
I'm pretty sure the best proof is: increase in forrest fires around the world...let me tell ya i kept an eye on them and there have never been this many fires!
You must be a natural cors!
If the forest fires continue...we'll be chasing at the Arctic Circle in a few years! HA!
I'm thinking if the green color is entirely from refracting of visible light, then it must be attributed to the liquid/ice/aerosol concentration in the cloud...which I'm not sure how a tornado would influence. Since by definition a supercell has a mesocyclone, which results in a much stronger updraft, which would suspend larger ice particles within the storm, and then would cause vastly different refraction properties within the storm...this is my subjective reasoning for green coloring. I've seen MANY storms that did not come close to producing a tornado but had the most vivid green coloring I've ever seen. Shelf clouds seem to produce a huge amount of green as well. Maybe the main factor is the degree of tilt in the updraft??? That's one characteristic shared by a squall line and a supercell...both of which have green coloring.
Jansie..I'm not sure how to access archived radar data from Canadian radar sites...Maybe Simon knows??
Thanks....this site is certianly feeding my severe weather addiction :)
Simon..any ideas?
Jansie..you might try this:
Select GGW, or another close US radar site, and adjust the end-time and loop duration and you will likely see your storm!
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/radar/
There must be a way to access archived Canadian data though.
hey reed...what about light refraction through dust particles? canola seed dust is green in natur. just a thought .
no cors...i didnt take those...but that day is what started my infatuation. i was there for it but no camera. i moved from north edmonton in clariview 2 weeks before it hit that day to the town 20 kms north. it just missed the town of fort saskatchewan.
He, he, he...
Reed, you'll be sorry you asked that!
Well, you see, we do have a radar archive that can be accessed internally. Staff can get to it, but the public (i.e. Canadians who have already payed for it through their taxes) usually need to contact someone (I'm not sure who in particular exactly, and I work there!) and place an order. The last time I checked, it was something ridiculous like $90 for the first image (I presume for the *extremely* difficult task of pulling it up and e-mailing the image, which takes all of two minutes) and an additional $2 for each additional one. Hopefully this has changed in the past few years...
In it are archives of the volume data as well as two products, namely the 1.5km CAPPI and echo tops. The volume data needs to be processed through our radar software to get any other imagery. (There's a separate "image archive," but my experience is that it's hit or miss; I've looked stuff up for some of my own case studies, and some of the radar and sat images were missing). The volume data usually needs to be place on a separate internal server. The one we were using for case studies in Ontario is currently in a "poor state of repair," which is fantastic because I need it for some of my work!
Okay, I think I feel better now...
Sooo... the short answer is you have to contact someone at EC to get the data and you have to pay... a lot. What we could do is this (if Reed doesn't mind, of course); send your e-mail address to Reed, and he could forward it to me so I can contact you directly. When I get back to work on Tuesday, I'll see if I can't do something to help you out (I'll also ask around about that tornado report in Sask today, too.)
In the mean time, you might want to contact Dan Kulak at the Edmonton office (780-951-8607) and tell him about the damage in your area. He the Warning Preparedness Meteorologist, who's job it is to co-ordinate things like damage surveys, etc.
First ask if there has been a damage survey team sent out there to do an investigation, and then describe the damage you have in your area (it sound really juicy, so to speak, so it might deserve a closer analysis). He will be looking for specifics, like which quarters got hit, nearby intersections, the times that this stuff occured, etc.
You could also ask him about the radar thing, because when I looked into it a few years ago before I started working for EC, the results were less than encouraging....
Hope this helps,
Simon E.
lmao!...thats our government .
Well, I think the problem here is the severe lack of people in these positions. Imho, I think that the radar data archives (as well as a number of other sources of information) should be publicly accessible, that more than two reflectivity products should be available (let alone doppler data), etc. It wouldn't take much to simply allow full public access to the radar archive; the problem is that it requires some work to do that and there just aren't enough people to make it happen quickly.
It just pisses me off that even staff have trouble getting archived data for significant events, let alone the public!
Simon E.
Anyone know if that storm in central sask has move into manitoba yet?
amen simon...amen.
Hi Amanda,
Well, I'm not sure if there's still convection going on underneath it, but you can see what's left of the anvil on IR Satellite:
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/satellite/index_e.html
Scroll down to GOES West - Western Canada - IR (Infra Red...) - Large. You'll see a big cirrus shield NE of Southern Indian Lake in northern Manitoba, that's left over from the convection that spawned the tornado warning in the Pinehouse Lake area.
Gawd, I which we had dopplers up there! There are quite a few supercells in that region every year, and I think we could learn a lot from studying those...
Oh, right, the answer is yes; it has moved in to Manitoba... but it's not nearly as severe as it was before and it's in the middle of nowhere...
I have verbal diarrhea, did you notice?
Oh, oh, oh; one last thing!
If anyone wants to look at a few good case studies for the Prairie Provinces, go to:
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/environment/envirogeog/weather/science.html
Radar imagery, including the June 22 and June 23 tornadic events in southern Manitoba from this year.
Sleep time now...
Being as all the radar images are named by the 10 minute period (http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/radar/temp_image/XWL/XWL_PRECIP_RAIN_2007_07_22_06_30.GIF) It'd be relatively easy for anyone with a computer and basic programming skills to set up a program to just download the data for the area they want/all of Canada. According to the terms of use if it's non-commercial use it'd be legal to even have those archived on a separate site automatically.. the only limitations are really bandwidth and storage space.
oh man, over here in the netherlands we have one of the worst weather service in europe. get this they dont even have radar on their site. oh yes they started making an english site too 5years ago(never finish)
so that all wouldnt mind if it wasnt payed for by my f-ing tax money. they sell acces to data to the highest bidder, double whammy... :(
please invade us..usa..cant take it anymore AAAAAAAAAA
Realized right after I posted I didn't really clarify.. I'm talking future automated private archiving NOT downloading old images.. I've looked through the folder structure of the EC website and a few of the things are password protected. EC has grib data publicly available though (which I didn't know until recently)
lol cors...it was like that in canada and in certain places is still. in edmonton we had to have an f-4 and 27 dead...4 years later we got the doplar we needed here.
yea Dale, I mean like wtf its not that we're a poor country. we got a sea defence that cost billions. lol and the worst thing ...the dutch folks are very happy with the weather data they get....if they only knew...get this the other day I saw a huge funnel in the center of amsterdam so i write in the shout in caps funnel over amsterdam...lol the admin(ikke)wrote; cors this is ur last warning dont use caps in the chat....please hand me the 50cal now ;)
hmm I read the article and its amazing they dont really know why the sky gets green. luckely im here ;) so first green=blue+yellow so it could very well be a combination of colors resulting in green. hmm blue=water yellow=sun so why u only see green with severe storms well...it must be the sunlight aimed by waterdruplets in an angle that keeps reflecting and trapping the sunlight(like a million mirrors aimed towards eachother)basicallly i dont know but im going with the blue mixed with yellow theory :P..(what a mystery!)
Interesting set-up for Iowa AGAIN tomorrow. Dewpoints in 70s, really weird mid and upper level flow, (at least looks weird to me, dead south storm motion). SPC has them bullseyed in the risk area again with mention of maybe a few tornadoes even with no real LLJ. Any thoughts on tomorrow night in Iowa?
Thanks for the info Simon and Tim...Jansie..if you want to send an email to reed@tornadovideos.net I'll forward your email to Simon.. We probably need to set up an automatic archiving program of Canadian data...definitely in time for next season.
I'll definitely be adding a post about the setup tomorrow in Iowa, Andrew...could be very interesting.
Tuesday looks potentially active in SK and MB..if the WRF verifies...there could be a lot of tornadoes.
That's it I'm getting a summer job in Canada.
And I'm definitely looking forward to updates on Tuesday from all you Canucks if that model is right.
Just wondering Reed any thing happening with a chat? So guys like me can stop cluttering up your page, lol.
Jason said he would implement the chat as soon as he can...last I talked to him he was hoping to have it up and running by the weekend...but he's been insanely busy these days.