Another weak front passed us today. Only marginal CAPE with weak deep layer shear was present, but the front provided enough lift for some semi-serious storms to form. I got a nice view of a shallow shelf cloud in the vicinity of my home. It was really a multi-cellular mess. Only this storm showed some signs of organization, everything else was just not worth looking at. Some nearby cells really killed the action on the cell I photographed. It was soon digesting downdrafts from other cells and died soon after that.
Yeah, we've seen better but given that the season sucks so far and it's still early May, I'll take this one.
Wall cloud of the first cell of the day that did not produce anything.
Nice LVL2 outlook was ahead of us. Friend and I decided to chase in Italy, FVG region. The only region that made sense to chase. We got off the highway before Portogruaro for Varmo and Cordoiso. The outlook was bad, no initiation, was afraid that it will result in a bust. Nothing interesting was happening but then suddenly ... a storm! Crazy driving to get ahead of it to intercept but we were too late. Got some photos but the storm was too fast. It ran us over very quickly, especially with the bad roads. Wet microburst with winds over 100 km/h, fortunately no hail. This storm dropped a rain-wrapped tornado somewhere along the way so were kinda lucky. Once the wind was strong and with strong rain there is nothing you can do. Especially with people driving 20 km/h. Obviously there were not in a hurry to get out of there. Before the storm caught us we got a look at a nice wall cloud which was rotating nicely. The storm made quite a bit of damage, there was a lot of broken trees on the roads.
Wasn't expecting much from this day but it went really well. My first sight of the supercell was near Trebnje. It took awile to get on the highway ... Missed the first supercell but bagged the next one, crazy driving saved me! :) These storms dropped large hail near Grosuplje and made a lot of damage.
From Trebnje.
Still very unorganized but very active. I was right under all the action. Crazy lift and inflow. A lot of CGs also, was kinda scared to stand outside of the car! Was dropping hail already.
Crazy inflow. Mesocyclone occlusion began here already with rain on the levt. I was moving practially all the time. It was fast.
A few kilometers ahead. Nice wall cloud. RFD really close, wall cloud already a bit in the rain. Not showing the structure very well.
On the road back along Trebnje. RFD on the left, not looking very good.
I still got one more look on the meso once I got ahead of the storm. Really crappy roads here, impossible to track anything here for long period of time.
The forecast was good so me and two friends decided to chase in FVG (Friuli-Venezia-Giulia). Starting point was in Sežana then we proceeded to catch the first thing that came into our range. It was already spectacular on the radar when we started. We caught it close to city Udine.
On the road, still in Novo Mesto.
First supercell on a gas station near Udine. Nice inflow banding. Too bad there were stratus clouds all around us so we didn't get to see much other then the wall cloud and circulation.
Awesome view of the wall cloud.
Spectacular rotation. Too bad we were a little late so we head to do most of our shooting from the car.
Once again the awesome structure of the wall cloud. RFD is now obvious.
On a toll booth, in traffic ... RFD was really cutting into the wall cloud as seen here. Obvious lowering, it was trying to produce a tornado here but it couldn't.
This storm then hit the hills east of Udine. I'm certain that it would produce tornado if there weren't any hills on the way! Next supercell please ...
From the car.
Close to Palmanova. This supercell already dropped 2 tornadoes, one of them F3 with 10.5 km lenght and 250 m width ... Too bad we missed this one also.
Back north.
Interesting structure.
On the same gas station as before. Awesome view!
All over the sky. Nicely illuminated.
Panorama...
Successful stormchase, too bad we missed the tornadoes but that's how it is. Maybe with better CAPE ...
This was a supercell that really surprised us all. I didn't even went to chase, kinda got caught unprepared but I took some photos from my home in Novo mesto. This supercell dropped 6-7 cm hail in Ljubljana. I wanted to intercept it in Novo mesto but it kinda dryed out, so no specatular photos for me. My friend got a couple of fantastic photos of the mesocyclone in LJ. Check them HERE. Inflow easily seen more than 70 km far away.
It was more than 2000 J/kg CAPE that day with 20 m/s DLS but no low lever winds thus no veering and helicity so I did not expect such a supercell forming!
