Ben.Holcomb's blog

Today I went to the National Weather Service office in Detroit/Pontiac, MI to participate in field day with W8FSM (Fred), WF5X (Randy), KC8YGT (Sean) and the others at the office. Fellow storm chaser Phil Kurimski was working when I first got here, and I said hi to him before getting the radios setup.

I didn't do any operating, however, I did go watch the weather balloon launch this evening for the 00Z sounding out of DTX. I, of course, took video like a total nerd which can be viewed below.

The Storm Prediction Center has placed much of Lower Michigan under a slight risk of Severe Thunderstorms this afternoon and evening. Temperatures have soared today into the 90's with dewpoints of around 70 across most of the lower half of Michigan.

CAPE Values are 4000 per latest SPC Mesoanalysis, and LI values of around -11, which suggests a highly unstable airmass in place over Michigan.

It appears likely that storms will fire here in the next couple hours, and quickly become severe. Upper level winds are strong enough to support some decent straight line winds, which is what I expect as the main threat today.

I will be out chasing and streaming most likely on ChaserTV later today. You can view my stream there as long as I am in Michigan. If I leave the West Michigan/Mid Michigan TV markets, I will most likely switch my stream over to TVN.

I started this day off in Bethany, MO after chasing Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri the night before. I woke up late and quickly realized that I needed to hit the road right away if I wanted to get anything.

I headed up I-35 to Des Moines, and then east towards Chicago. About the time I started crossing the Mississippi River, storms started to fire just to my east. I decided in Geneseo, IL that I needed to go up I-88, so I got off I-80 and headed up to I-88 and then over.

Unfortunately, those cells pretty much fell apart for one reason or another, and now I was stuck on I-88.

I started getting alerts on my phone a little further down for my home counties in Lansing. A nice supercell had erupted over the city, and dropped up to 1.5" hail. The one report that really disappointed me was the TV station which is directly across I-96 from my apartment had hail up to 4 inches deep on the ground. I missed the best hail event in the area in years!

So I started this day by waking up, and planning on going to work. I knew that Scott Bennett scored a wedge the night before in Nebraska, and had just rewired my truck the night before, getting to bed a little after 1 am.

When I woke up at 6am I looked at the SPC like I do every morning. 10% hatched tornado, Moderate Risk. I started looking at the models and realized that it was going to be an insane day. Of course, I forgot to check cap, but hey, it looked insane right? Who cares?

I went to work, and arrived around 7. I walked in, filled out my time off request, handed it to my boss Nick, and he signed it, and away I went. I came back to my house at 720, picked up abe, got my chasing equipment setup, and we were on the road by 7:30 am EDT.

After getting home at around 8am from Iowa the day before, I spent most of the day on Friday sleeping. It was all broken sleep as I kept checking the storms. Around noon a Tornado Watch was issued for Northern Indiana and parts of Southwest Michigan, but nothing looked very promising.

I went back to bed, and woke up sometime in the mid afternoon and took a shower. I then took another hour nap or so, then decided to hit the road around 4pm. The original target was Northern Indiana. I went and picked up my dad, and had him drive. A cell in Indiana had gone Tornado Warned, but I knew we'd never catch it. I headed down I-69 and then decided to go west on I-80 and intercept the other cell which was in Marshall County.

I finally got some video edited from the flooding on Friday Night in Holland, MI. Over 8 inches of rain fell in a very short period of time, causing most of the city to be under water.

I didn't get as much video as I'd liked since I was also working with the TV station. It was incredible to see how much of the town was actually under water, especially considering that I was in Holland last weekend for the MS150 Bike ride.

While I was chasing Friday, there was apparently 3 tornadoes which have been confirmed by the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, MI just a couple miles from where I was at the time.

I will be posting a full chase account later on today. I watched the storms come ashore near St. Joseph, MI and then headed up north towards Holland. These Tornadoes would have been on the ground while I was going up I-196 along the Lake Michigan shoreline. I would have been in Van Buren County for all 3, which is the county south of Allegan and the county west of Kalamazoo county.

0140 4 E PULLMAN ALLEGAN MI 4247 8601 EF2 TORNADO ON THE GROUND FOR 5.7 MILES. ONE QUARTER MILE WIDE. TOUCHED DOWN AT 940 PM. LIFTED AT 946 PM. HOUSE DESTROYED FROM NUMEROUS FALLEN TREES. PARTIAL ROOF TORN (GRR)

I am heading out to chase the Moderate Risk in INdiana and southern Michigan today. You can view my Live ChaseCam today at ChaserTV.com by going to the following URL

http://www.chasertv.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=195...

Tornado warnings near the Northern Indiana office currently. I am on the road.