Here is a report of a storm chase I had on Sunday when I intercepted an intense squall line with embedded mesocyclone in SW Friuli, right on the border with Veneto region. I first drove to Portogruaro and then headed north towards Pordenone where intercepted a mesocyclone to my left. Its structure can be seen on the first images below, though more obvious look beneath it can be seen on the video at the bottom of this message (first 30s of video). Later I turned east to be ahead of it and I’ve been blasted with intense RFD gusting near 80km/h while driving towards Udine. Meanwhile took a few more shots of shelf cloud structure before left it to run over me with intense rainfalls just SW of Udine. The lightning activity was quite frequent. Also, quite a lot of debris was flying in the air when RFD hit.

Here is a radar image at the time when I was recording the video… I was right there near that 65dBz reflectivity:

And the radar animation of the squll line passage from Veneto to Friuli region…

4 hours radar animation from 15 to 19 UTC

A couple of shots… first taken between Portogruaro and Pordenone…

And later on towards Udine ahead of the squall…

Here is the video of the whole event. Looking over the first 30s of the video, there is a obvious wall cloud structure beneath the main supercellular/mesocyclonic structure. I actually doubt these could be only a scud clouds, especially when taking in account the radar image above:

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  Video of intense squall line on June 13th 2010 in SW Friuli
  

I was quite happy with the chase, though the season this years is still pretty poor and less intense than one would want it to be. But we will see how continues. Stay tuned for future updates.

Originalbericht: http://www.weather-photos.net/blog/?p=1150