I've been on my first "2002 storm chase" this evening.
I heard reports of a wonderful mammatusdisplay in southwestern parts of The
Netherlands this afternoon and radarimages showed that the line of storms
was slowly moving in my direction.
At 18.20 LT I drove to a nice vantage point near Soest and soon it started
to rain. The frontside of the storm was marked by a great arcus and a
whale's mouth. Very nice! In the west the sun was setting, which resulted in
a very bright orange glow. The base of the storm was turbulent and sometimes
small "funnels" formed underneath it.
It was not merely rain the storm produced, four times I got hit (hard!) by graupel of about 3 mm. Also there were some nasty wind gusts, no idea which force though.
In the west a new shower was imminent and the view on it was spectacular.
The whole sky in a bright orange glow, dark fallstreaks and pink (!)
lightningflashes. Not many though, I've seen about 6 of them. I haven't seen
any mammatusclouds, the backside of the storm arrived to late at my location
(or the sun set to early). |
