StansWeather.net

Ah, April 20th, a very popular chase day for many. Last year, I intercepted a tornado south of Kankakee on April 20th. While the setup today wasn’t the same, I still wasn’t taking any chances. The winds were lacking in both shear and speed, but we had decent instability which I was hoping would pop something severe. I watched storms fire up in the afternoon in western IL with several going severe mainly due to hail. My plan was to stay close to home and chase whatever came to me. After leaving work around 4:00pm, I saw a couple of cells firing up west and southwest of town. On the way home, I filled up the gas tank at a lovely $2.32/gal.

I departed Champaign at 5:00pm and headed north of town to attempt an intercept of the cell coming in from the west. I made my way north of town and stopped at CR 2550N / 800E (6 miles west of Thomasboro, IL) as the rains began to pound me. While I was sitting there, I encountered some pea sized hail. I glanced at the radar and I was clearly in the core of this little cell. I sat there for about 10 minutes and then proceeded to head back south towards Champaign. As I went south through town on Mattis Avenue, it was raining like a June storm. The road was almost like a lake and all the cars were more like boats than cars.

There’s nothing like waking up to the entire state of Illinois draped under a moderate risk! At first I thought it was an early April Fools joke by the fine folks at the SPC, but after further review I noticed there was indeed a chance of some severe weather. Unfortunately I was stuck at work till 4pm, so going after the prime target of north central Illinois or anything in Iowa was definitely out of the question.

During the afternoon, storms started firing up in western Illinois. Several of them went severe and then finally one went tornadic near the Peoria area. I sat there at work drooling at the radar screen and was hoping that someone was chasing it. Right before I left work, I tried to come up with a target area. I had planned on heading up towards Bloomington, but with the storms moving at 65mph I had to readjust my plans.

I wasn’t expecting to chase today as the main area seemed to be further west into Missouri. (we’ve been there enough this year!) As the day went on though, the SPC sent out updates saying there was a small tornadic risk in western Illinois. (nifty 5% area!) I decided to take my normal lunch hour rather than work through it and leave early, really not expecting to get out and chase. I started to change my mind when a tornado watch was issued at 4:00pm for western Illinois. I left work at 4:30pm and went home to load up the gear. I departed Champaign at 5:00pm and headed west on I-72. Despite there being a tornado warning out for Kankakee county and seeing the storm from Champaign, I decided that the best stuff should be further west. (I would have never caught up to it anyway) As I got west of Springfield, I noticed ‘something’ to my southwest but I wasn’t seeing anything on radar/satellite. When I got to Jacksonville I almost decided to go south to attempt an intercept of whatever was down there, but decided against it.

I kept going west on I-72 until I started seeing stuff firing up to my northwest. I got off at exit 46 and headed north on SR 100. I took it north and then jogged onto US 67 which would take me more in a northwesterly direction. As I entered McDonough county around 8:00pm, I checked radar which showed a line of storms just to my northwest. (yay!) Once I got to Macomb, I headed west on US 136 mainly due to the slow people in front of me who must have thought it was still Sunday instead of Monday. Once I got into Tennessee (yes, I’m still in northwest IL..) I headed north on CR 11 towards the cell that was starting to come into view. I started seeing a very nifty shelf cloud with a possible wall cloud behind it. (about time!) As I got closer, there appeared to be some funnel looking thingies (yes that’s the official term for them) coming out of this possible wall cloud, but I don’t put any merit into them at all. (no rotation from what I could see)