An approaching cold front and upper trough set the stage for chasing today with decent instability and shear. Convection began in earnest around the noon hour so I rolled out the driveway during the early afternoon, heading south toward Rocky Mount. Near Wirtz I pulled off Rte 220 to take a peek at radar and scope out the situation with the MK 1 eyeball. I promptly saw this cell to the southwest with a lowering to the left of the precipitation shaft:
Noticing on radar that a line of storms to the north showed decent rotation I decided to move northeast to Burnt Chimney for a look. My thinking was that even if those cells weren’t worth the effort the cell approaching the Wirtz area was still catchable. But the view from BC looked pretty good so I stuck with the northern storms:
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Rising scud on southern edge of storms |
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Overall view of the southern end |
Keeping up with these storms proved problematic given the traffic on Rte 122 and then the twisting back roads I had to take in a vain attempt to keep up with the storm motion. I finally emerged onto the U.S. Route 29 corridor at Altavista with a dilemma on my hands: should I continue to chase the storms to my north or should I dive south to intercept a nice complex with indicated rotation nearing Chatham from the southwest?
Choosing the latter option I motored southward on rural roads in Pittsylvania county in order to reach Rte 40 ahead of the storm. I made it – barely – and then zoomed east and then south on the Cody Road (Rte 603) to get ahead of the storm for a look. I stopped for a bit in Republican Grove for a view of a wall cloud under the southern edge of the complex:
Given the overall storm motion right to left in front of me I was unable to stay here long before having to drop further down Cody Rd to reach U.S. Route 501 at Volens. From there I was unable to avoid the leading edge of heavy rain until just barely before reaching the town of Halifax. After a quick pit stop there I pushed a few miles east on Rte 360 to let the main part of the complex pass by in a static core punch.
Having noticed on radar another line of storms over the I-81 corridor I rolled back westward to Chatham and then turned north on Rte 29 to locate a vantage point. After poking around the countryside west of Rte 29 I found a spot to look west and north. From here I was able to record the approach of a monster shelf cloud via stills and video, as well as live streaming for the local TV station:
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Northern edge of the shelf cloud |
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Western edge |
As the leading edge of the shelf cloud passed overhead I snapped this photo:
I made no attempt to stay ahead of this storm and after the rain began I pulled up stakes to head home, satisfied with a three-fer for the day.
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