Unscheduled Storm Chase in State College

Jul 14, 2011; 2:12 PM ET

There was a chance of thunderstorms Thursday July 7 here in State College, PA, but by the time I went to a doctor appointment at 4:00, I figured it was all over. The storms had moved south on radar. But upon emerging from the building at around 5, I saw a dark cloud and rain shafts to my west. I pulled over to a semi-good vista looking west from Scenery Park, and this is what I saw (video includes phone conversations with Henry Margusity and Local storm chaser Ron “R-Factor” Shawley). These are the highlights; click here to view the full video on YouTube.

Henry and I were essentially observing the storm from opposite sides, which was cool. Indeed, much like the May 2010 storm, we got a whopper of a thunderstorm because it was “homegrown.” It quickly expanded to dish out heavy rain, high winds and small hail. I got a couple pictures of tree damage, and estimated winds were at least 60 mph when they were buffeting the car. Click below to see photos.

There were all kinds of interesting scud and appendages on this storm. I may have overdone the HDR processing on this pic of a scud cloud, but it really picked up the raindrops and leaves blowing in the wind well.

This is what the radar looked like at the time the cloud photos were taken (around the middle of the video).