Today's Forecast: Widespread Action

From Edmonton and Red Deer, through Saskatoon and Regina even Winnipeg is at risk from severe weather today. It looks like Edmonton will get lots of rain while thunderstorms are going to cover the rest of the area. Extreme southern Saskatchewan is at 35C. We are monitoring the situation closely.

Fast Moving Storm Hits Saskatoon

Here is a short video:

Fast Moving Storm Hits Saskatoon

I personally saw some hail about the size of a dime, intense lightning and heavy downpours on 33rd Street and Confederation Drive. Not much wind if any. Looking at the video now...

Note: this storm was moving at 70km per hour north east and more storms are possible tonight.

Video from yesterday's storms...

The video from yesterday's storms in central Saskatchewan will be posted later today. There wasn't much lightning but the rolling wall cloud looks incredible with aqua green clouds behind it. The photo in the previous post shows the cloud that eventually was responsible for the piles of hail and that sign that got destroyed. The storm damage was only about one kilometre south of where we were taking all the photos and video. As soon as the thing came over our heads it wrapped around us and we went back to the highway to find cars stopped on the side of the road due to visibilty (along with the damage). It was pretty scary for a few minutes there!

Storm Chase Summary Today

Marble size hail piled up on the side of the road and a big sign got destroyed by something outside of McDowall, Saskatchewan, which is about 30km south of Prince Albert. This storm had some very wild features with wall clouds and pretty fast rotation. After it burped this out at about 6pm, it went south-east and re-organized and we found a bit more hail on the road towards Melfort but that was pretty much it.

Alberta Rainbow

Here's is a shot of the rainbow we saw along the Alberta/Saskatchewan border on Tuesday evening. We didn't see any hail but there was some pretty intense lightning every minute or so. Moderate to heavy rain and some wind gusts that brought some tree branches onto the highway around Biggar later at night. This system should be pretty powerful tommorrow as it is dropping a lot of rain in western Saskatchewan right now. Saskatoon might get a downpour with lightning over the next few hours, overnight.

Storm chase between Perdue and Asquith

A short drive west of Saskatoon, this storm briefly got interesting but soon the low dry lightning convinced me to go home early on this storm...see last storm footage...
tonight:

...and another photo I found from Wednesday night, but I fixed up the brightness and levels...

Skycam Is Online: Severe Thunderstorm Watch for Saskatoon

The skycam has been turned back on and is updating every 6 minutes. A watch has been issued and cells are forming to the far north-west around Lloyminister. Saskatoon should see something in the early evening.

Lightning Show - Buffalo Pound - Video

Ok here is the video from last night:
Buffalo Pound Lightning
(north of Moose Jaw, west of Chamberlain)
and a couple more pictures:

Forecast Today

The outlook map will be updated later today. For now, it looks like some small cells are popping up west of Saskatoon but the biggest risk area will be in the heat of Manitoba.

Intense Lightning: North of Moose Jaw

I am exhausted from another long chase day. Just got back and I had to post at least one shot. Tons of video to go through again which I will post tommorrow. Its all lightning with this storm. No hail and even the rain wasn't that heavy. The best lightning shots of the year if not ever came out of what seemed like a very slow or even stationary storm.

More Photos From Monday's Storm

Here is a few more photos from Monday's storm. The first one is from north of Rosetown, where we changed direction and headed back through Rosetown to follow the shelf. I've just gone through a bunch of video clips and found a few good lightning bursts. Too bad no stills but the video is gonna be very entertaining once I have it produced. It should be online by Tuesday night.

Back in Saskatoon

This was a massive storm. I will post details in a bit...

Alberta: 6cm Hail, Tornado Watch In Effect

Calgary saw the beginings of an incredible storm today. Here is a site with some great photos and weather information from Calgary: wx.ca
Environment Canada reported 6cm hail with these storms that headed out of the Calgary area towards Drumheller which is now under a tornado watch. The cells seem to have split at this time and severe thunderstorm watches have been extended into western Saskatchewan. This system is moving quickly north-east, possibly even skipping on radar. With a forecast of some very high temperatures around Saskatoon on Monday, this tends to suggest that these storms will be nocturnal (look at the moon). We could see these storms increase in strength after the sun goes down. This system must be watched closely. Check CanadianPrairieStorms Yahoo group for more...

What a Friday!

Just got back from work to upload some photos from this afternoon. Gunjan and I took a trip srtaight for Radisson and caught a brief tornado that had a dust column going all the way up to the base of the clouds for about 30 seconds. I got a couple of crappy shots while driving but Gunjan should be posting his photos sometime soon I hope. He has some decent shots of it. Other than that tornado which was south of Radisson, we got hit with whitout conditions and some marble size hail. Before that we were under some of the most amazing cloud displays of the year. Aqua Green! I have some video that I will post later and tons of photos to go through. Here is a couple more photos:




Jared

Quick Post- Back in Saskatoon

Gunjan and I took a quick trip out to Radisson and saw a brief tornado. My photo only shows the funnel and not much of a disturbance on the ground as I was driving. Gunjan got a better pickture. However here is a pretty scary taste of what we saw. I have to run to work...

Saskatchewan Storm Chase

Looking at the radar, west of Saskatoon there could be chance to see a nice thunderstorm this afternoon. With cells filling out the area from Meadow Lake all the way down to Kindersley, something might pop-up somewhere in the middle. Biggar, SK. is always a fun target. Then either back east or north-east.

Jared The Chaser