Virginia Storm Chasing

When the rain begin dotting the windshield I left the Rte 24 Vera location and sped south toward Appomattox. When I reached the Rte 460 intersection it was obvious I couldn’t drop south through town and stay ahead of storm #2. So I turned east on 460 and motored to the Evergreen exit, where I did turn south. Locating a vantage point I stopped to watch the action as a shelf cl...

To end a very busy chase day, this was my view – taken as I was stopped on our non-busy street – of a final sunlit updraft:

My goal this day was to intercept storms that would interact with a backdoor cold front edging south across Virginia. At this point in the summer those weakening fronts will provide just about the only available shear to intensify cells. Th...

Yesterday – Independence Day – I gave in to the tug to chase “whack-a-mole” storms which fired as the heat dome began to ease off. This was the SPC Day 1 convective outlook:

After the SPC issued a Mesoscale Convective Discussion I headed down the driveway to check out a nearby storm. Unfortunately the convection initiated and then tracked northward over the moun...

I finally scored a decent 2026 storm chase! The SPC had a Slight Risk over most of the Old Dominion for Monday, June 22nd:

A review of the convective allowing models (CAMs) showed a modicum of agreement for at least a couple rounds of storms. Round #1 looked like it would fire along the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge during mid-afternoon, with round #2 coming ...

After a week-plus hiatus I’m back in chase mode now. However, I’ve become jaded with respect to storm predictions over the past 12 months or so. The convective allowing models (CAMs) have not been very good either in location or timing of storms, and the inconsistencies between models have been notable. Thus, when I see SPC outlooks like this Day 2 graphic for Monday I am ske...