Strangest Delaware Weather Ive ever seen.....

[Ed Spacer]

I am a skywarn spotter here on the east coast.I live in Middletown,DE,and I have been a study of limatology and an ameteur meteorologist for over twenty five years.I would like to share a story from events that happned here ,yep,in Delaware,this past July.

I started,ironically, into the field of weather at the age of 6 by doing the same thing,laying down, and watching the clouds roll by, and fill up the sky to the point of materializing into a thunderstorm, or just a rainshower. Listen to this. I live in Middletown,DE, and we had many unprecedented climatalogical weather events take shape both this past Monday,July 12, and Wednesday, July 14. We had climatalogical events that take place in the midwest,not the east coast. Dynamics are changing to the greater of intensity of the weather systems that maintain the atmospheric gradient. Get this:


- We had had a series of thunderstorms that started early in the morning on Monday that were developing into MCS's(meso-cyclonic systems) and duratios(long-lived thunderstorm clusters)because we had one in the early moring which raised the humidity by about 20%, and then because of the heating of the later morning and afternoon at the lower levels, and at 2:15 PM, we had tornado warnings for Harford and nearby Cecil County,Maryland, due to the meso-cyclonic rotation that these storms had created within themselves as they grew. I could see it through the fact that the relative humidity had dropped some(which is a sign that the kinetic energy is releasing fast enough to evaporate the moisture of the humid air)and I went chasing after the big storm coming. We had had already gotten 6 1/2 inches of rain at this point.Unless you know exactly what you are doing, this is not recommended under any circumstances for anyone. Well, I went to the Wawa to get gas for my car, and low and behold,the canopy that covered about six gas pumps overhead and over me got hit by lightning. Too close. Well, there was a dark black cloud lowering over the horizon, with a light green cloud behind it. I drove through the intersection, and down this Rt. 15 to Choptank Rd, and took pictures of the storm, or at least tried to. Small, and then large hail started falling. I had to get into my car. As I was driving, (continued tommorrow)





(continued from yesterdays message) two minutes later, the black cloud was dropping a bit, as it was a supercell MSC thunderstorm, it looked like it's own squall line, but it was rotating,winds converging from the southwest and the ENE. I saw the tornado come from the ground upwards(which supports many theories and discoveries I have made on why they form)in a field on a horse farm , a semi-transparent tube spiraling upwards meeting the parent cloud in the thunderstorm. It lasted only a minute or two, but afterwards, we had received another five inches of rain all the way until after midnight from several more storms that crossed and regenerated in the area.We had lightning hit several times almost at my home. We lost cable for twelve hours, and the radio signals were interfered with due to the thousands of lightning strikes so it was impossible for anyone to obtain a news update,etc,on the situation.There was flooding. Big time. An F3 tornado tounched down near Hershey,PA,causing widespread damage.The tornado I spoted had actually touched down previously in across the border in Maryland,which was really close by. Tabernacle,NJ. had received 19.5 inches of rain in a seven-hour period on Monday,July 12,2004.We received 11.5 inches of rain.

Tuesday, July 13,2004, fairly uneventful, but at 3-4 AM Wednesday, we received rain from a dying MSC complex,but it set up the dewpoint to 73 degrees(humidity 88%).The temperature was 78 degrees, and within 90 minutes, jumped up to 90 degrees. This fueled another Msc complex developing,which created more flash flloding, and another tornado warning for Cecil county,Maryland, and then New Castle County until 7 PM. We had received a torrential downpour from another storm fifteen minutes before,which dropped 3.41 inches of rain in twenty minutes. I went out, becuase this was not the main storm coming toward us, and I saw the black cloud outline. I drove down US 301 toward the intersection of Rt 71(Broad Street) on the outer limits of Middletown. As I came closer, I saw a black rain shield under the parent cloud, but I saw funnels coming out of the ground, joining the parent cloud, and then dissapating. Not only that, the circulation bred many other satellite vorticies that at one point or another became the main parent funnel. There were two car accidents before the intersection from people trying to get away.Then when I turned around on 301 because it was too close to me, it became a single tornado for two or three minutes, for which at 60 MPH, I still could not outrun. As I was travelling, the back end of my car lifted a few inches off the ground, and I was moved slightly while the car was moving. The rain was spiraling sideways and in a circular direction, blinding rain. I travelled back into town, and I saw the weather system congeil, and blow over some trees in town, and skip some streets, multiple vorticies and all. It was weak, but I saw a circular motion in the water that was starting to flood the street, and went through RFD again(rotating funnel directional wind)and the storms lasted until 7PM, and thats it.



Any thoughts?