As Autumn approaches us here in the Southern Hemisphere, Spring is putting it's foot in the door up in the Northern Hemisphere. And as many of you know, Spring means tornadoes for the United States. Last year in 2009 we saw the largest tornado research mission in history in progress with the Vortex II team. The season was also well documented with the Discovery Channel's 'Storm Chasers" series getting into the action and broadcasting some of the action for the rest of the world to see. It will be interesting to see if they partake in another season this year, as popularity in mainstream culture for storm chasing seems to be on the increase.

2009 saw some very successful intercepts by Sean Casey, Reed Timmer and the TVN team as well as Vortex II. They managed to intercept a tornado which is said to have wielded the largest amount of data ever collected on a single tornado.

Tornadoes are still a long way from being completely understood and therefore any new research is vital in ensuring an increase in warning times as well as being able to distinguish before hand whether a supercell thunderstorm will drop a tornado or not. At current the only way to forecast a tornado is to give an average percentage forecast and they can be very inaccurate. As meteorologists are still puzzled as to how some supercell thunderstorms spawn tornadoes but yet others do not.

Personally I am looking forward to another season of following the tornado activity. I have been tracking hurricanes for 6 years, though this is only my third year thoroughly following the United States tornado season.

Speaking of hurricanes. Hurricane season will also soon be upon us, and officially kicks off on the 1st June for the Atlantic ocean. As I'm sure lots of you are aware, 2005 was a very active year for tornadoes with such names as Katrina, Rita and Wilma causing destruction, though since 2005 the Atlantic hurricane seasons have been very tame. The current forecast for this year is for above average activity so we will just have to see how it pans out!

I received an email from William Vermaak in Centurion, Pretoria who managed to capture a funnel cloud during a heavy thunderstorm in the area. He said that the funnel began to dip a bit before becoming even more defined and stretching down, but then quickly going back up.

A rare occurrence, though funnel clouds are by no means unheard of in Gauteng and there have been numerous funnel cloud spotings over the past years. Though majority of them do not touch down and therefore do not become classified as tornadoes.

April is usually a month where thunderstorms are most present in the Western Cape due to seasonal transitional cut-off lows which are now being brought north with the jet stream without strong ridges to block them. Though up north thunderstorm activity in South Africa tends to peak around Nov-Feb.

Thanks for the photo, and if anyone encounters such things as funnel clouds, hail, tornadoes or other interesting events I welcome you to email me them and allow it to be shared with the rest of South Africa.

Over the past 7 or so years I have been an active weather photographer, starting off I was using a 2 megapixel point and shoot and was just looking out the window every now and again for some seemingly pretty clouds as well as waiting for the rare Cape Town thunderstorm to roll in so I could grab some cheap video and possibly photos of the storm. At this time I had no idea about 'storm chasing' and it was just me following a personal interest.

Over the years though I learned about storm chasing, and began reading up on it whenever I could. I found a 'mentor' in weather photography through Gordon Richardson from Capetownskies.com who had been doing what I had been doing but for much longer and with much more knowledge. I contacted him in early 2004 I think it was and since we have been in contact regarding everything weather related, local and international.

Anyway what I'm getting at is how I've had the chance to watch the interest in storm chasing in South Africa grow over the years. This is mostly due to the Discovery Channel series 'Storm Chasers' which has popularized storm chasing even more so than twister (In South Africa at least). When starting out with storm chasing there was very little interest and support in South Africa, and hence me creating this website. I would search for hours just to find some random pdf study about a tornado that happened somewhere in S.A or about severe storms in Cape Town in the past 10 years.

Now days though I am getting emails from people all over the country showing an interest in storm chasing, and it's at a great time too. The South African weather service has just finished installing doppler radar which will make storm chasing a bit easier here in South Africa. Each time I receive an email from someone asking to be listed as a chaser on the site it feels as though our tiny little community has gained another soldier in the fight for understanding and experience nature at it's finest.

I am considering a possible meet up in the upcoming years somewhere in Gauteng where for a period of 4-5 days chasers can be in constant contact and go chasing together, something like what happens in the U.S, because currently we have some chasers but we are yet to establish a real community. It is a goal of mine I hope to make a reality by some time before 2015, though hopefully sooner than later.

I just want to thank all of you whom have contacting me showing your support and interest in storm chasing. Remember you can always get involved in the forums if you so desire, where you can get to know the other chasers a bit better and also stay informed about weather developments.

The past 2 weeks have been really interesting around the Cape Town area. Temperatures exceeded 35 degrees Celcius for close to 10 days in a row in many places, with recorded temperatures of 46'C in Paarl over the past weekend.

It's funny that just a few weeks ago I was talking about the lack of a general summer weather pattern and just days after that post a very typical intense summer weather pattern set in. There have been a few troughs around which lead to some instability and thundershowers too.

I was communicating with Gordon Richardson of Capetownskies.com for a few hours prior to the storms occurrence on Sunday 7th March 2010. He alerted me as to some small storms developing about 200km to the North West of Cape Town. I then continued to monitor these cells as they headed SSE towards Cape Town.

I went outside at around 10:45pm and could see very distant lightning, but after monitoring the radar for another 20 minutes made the decision to head to Strand beach in hopes of capturing some lightning photographs. I've had pretty bad luck with lightning photos as I live in an area with too much light for long exposure and too many trees too. But due to lightning being so rare in Cape Town I decided to take the chance and head down to the beach at what was now 11:15 pm.

When I arrived at the beach there were fisherman along the waters edge and I set up my tripod in what seemed to be the best location. 5 minutes in there had only been 1 or 2 sheet flashes but no C-G yet... Then out of nowhere in a period of about 10 minutes there were 8 or so C-G strikes, which then ended just as abruptly as they came. I still gave it 10 more minutes or so before packing up and heading back home... Though on the way home I saw it had become active again, but I knew I had some good shots already so I left it.

The current forecast for Cape Town shows more possible thundershowers this week, though I am not going to bet on any more good photos.