Chase Logs 2007
Popcorn Storms and Wall Cloud
June 2, 2007
12:00pm-4:30pm
Anoka, MN
Note: Completed in January 2009I am very surprised that I didn't fall asleep during today's storm chase. Not that today was boring. My day began, well, yesterday in Silver Spring, MD with the conclusion of the NOAA Hollings Scholarship orientation. Since my flight was scheduled to leave Reagan Airport at 6:00am EDT, I decided to stay up all night and watch Star Wars on TV. Bad move. I started the first episode at 9:00pm, but fell asleep shortly after 3:30am during the end of the fourth movie. I woke up ten minutes before my bus's departure time of 4:30am, frantically shoved everything into my suitcase and bolted downstairs. Only the bus was 40 minutes late and we didn't leave Silver Spring until after 5am. I arrived at the airport at 5:40am, raced through airport security, and arrived at the terminal five minutes before boarding. Safely on the plane, I watched the sun rise over Washington D.C. as we taxied to the runway, and then promptly took a nap. I woke up as we crossed the St. Croix river valley and met my mom at the terminal shortly after 7:00am CDT.
During a game of ultimate frisbee the previous night, I severely bruised my right heel while landing after a catch. Needless to say, I had quite a limp. As a result, my mom brought me to the hospital after I arrived to have it x-rayed for broken bones (first time I had been to a hospital in a long time). The results were thankfully negative, and I went home to unpack. But the weather had other plans. Shortly after noon the previously clear skies gave way to a low stratus cloud deck peppered with heavy rain showers. This trend continued through the early afternoon and soon several thunderstorms were occurring around my house, occasionally dumping heavy rain throughout the afternoon. I decided to head out to the AHS parking lot at 2:00pm and see if I could find any interesting storm structures. I sat there for about two hours watching various storms before my eye caught a low batch of scud clouds organizing around the base of a storm just to my south. I watched these clouds for awhile as they grew in size and formed a weak wall cloud just a few miles to the southwest at 4:00pm. I held off calling it in to the NWS since the storm looked very disorganized, and within minutes the wall cloud got caught in the storm's main downdraft and was destroyed by 4:20pm, at which point I headed home for the day. I confirmed with other area chasers that this was indeed a non-rotating wall cloud. A time lapse series of the life of the wall cloud is shown below.
