StansWeather.net

I didn’t really have much time to look at data in the morning as I had to be at work at 9:00am CDT. Taking a quick glance at the Day 1 showed that central Illinois was in a slight risk of severe weather, as it had been the past few days. I figured that anything that fired up locally would be in the late afternoon or early evening hours. Temperatures were forecasted to be in the low 90s with dew points in the mid-upper 60s, definitely an unstable atmosphere.

Around 3:30pm while I was slaving away at work, the radio station I was listening to announced that a severe thunderstorm watch had been issued for Champaign County until 9:00pm CDT. (woo hoo!) I quickly got stuff settled at work and headed home to check the weather data. Radar showed a nice line of storms across west central Illinois that seemed to be bowing out. I also noticed a very distinct outflow boundary heading SSE towards my location. There were already storms firing up behind this boundary, so I figured it’d only be a matter of time before it fired up more.

At 6:00pm CDT, I noticed some storms firing up behind the outflow boundary in Piatt/DeWitt counties. I decided to head out and see what I could dig up. I proceeded west of town on Rt.150 towards the Mahomet area. Unlike the previous chase, there were a lot of clouds hanging around, so individual cells were much harder to see. After roaming around for a little while, I noticed a shelf cloud around 6:35pm CDT. (200E/1900N) I drove a mile down the road and noticed some nifty rain shafts to my south. The winds at this point were coming out of the north. I drove west about a quarter mile on 1800N off 200E and noticed a lot of dust blowing across the road. I pulled over and started shooting some video. The winds shifted from a northerly direction to a more west-northwest direction. (weeds along the side of the road were now blowing into my car!) 🙂 I glanced back to my southwest and noticed a big area of dust lurking around. It obviously wasn’t a tornado, but it could have been a gustnado. (still analyzing the video)

I decided to head south a few miles on 200E to see what else I could find. After passing over the I-72 overpass, the rains finally made an appearance. I turned around and headed back north to 1900N. I went east from there to 700E where I decided to head back south. I noticed some wanna-be wall cloud to my southeast, but it didn’t do anything. I shut the camcorder off for a few minutes and during that time, I saw lightning hit something that resulted in a green glow. (it would have been neat to get that on video!) Anywho, I continued south on 700E observing more dust blowing around to my southeast.

Around 7:30pm CDT, I decided to head back towards Champaign. As I was heading north on Rt.45 near Tolono, my weather radio went off. (the only time it went off while I was out chasing) It was a tornado warning for Vermilion county, too far east to even think about going after. I arrived home just after 8:00pm CDT, weeds and all. 😉 After looking at the radar data, the big line of storms rapidly lost their intensity as they moved into east central Illinois. I still had a lot of fun though despite the lack of severe weather.

Final thoughts:
Despite the big line of storms dying out, it was still a good chase. I will have to figure out how to keep those darn weeds from blowing in on the next chase though. 😉

Total Chase Time: 2 hours
Total Chase Miles: 40 miles

While the moderate risk was way out in Wyoming and Nebraska, parts of Illinois were under a slight risk for Saturday. The forecast models were predicting CAPE values between 2000 and 4000 j/kg, which is probably the highest they’ve been all year. The atmosphere was definitely juicy and very unstable, so anything that would get going would develop rapidly. However, when looking at the 7:00am CDT (12z) upper air sounding, it showed a cap value of 3.2. That’s a pretty decent sized cap, so storms would really need to punch through that to fire up. Needless to say, I was optimistic that something would fire up in the late afternoon/evening.

Around 10:50am CDT, I heard someone calling me on the local 146.760 ham repeater, but they were using my old callsign. I suddenly realized that it was Chad Gard from INCHASE, so I went back to him. While we were talking, I was alerted of a mesoscale discussion for IL/IN/OH/KY. I informed Chad about this and even read the entire statement to him. (which probably scared any non-chasers who happened to be monitoring the frequency) 😉 Anywho, he decided that he was going to head to Springfield to check on data. He offered to pick me up on his way through, but I declined and told him I would just wait for the storms to fire up around here. Chad also told me that he finally got his APRS tracker working, so I decided to look him up on the Internet to see if it was working. Sure enough, I pulled up his position and tracked him all the way to Springfield. 🙂

I decided to continuously monitor the radar/satellite maps as best as I could. While looking at the radar loop from ILX, I noticed an outflow boundary between Bloomington and Springfield that was moving to the northeast. In reading the Chicago area forecast discussion, they also mentioned this boundary. Taking a hunch, I looked up the special upper air soundings and sure enough, ILX had sent one up at 1:00pm CDT (18z) to check out the atmosphere. The cap value had increased from 3.2 to 5.7, ouch! This was severely suppressing any thunderstorm development. So now the wait was on to see if the cap would break or not.

Around 5:30pm CDT, I noticed a few cells in Western Illinois that were trying to go up, but they seemed to just be dying as soon as they did. (darn cap) A few minutes later, a small cell popped up right here in Champaign county. It didn’t stay up very long, but soon after another cell popped up almost in the same spot. Was this the beginning of the cap finally eroding? Around 6:55pm CDT, I decided to head out and see if I could intercept one of these cells. Just after I left, the weather radio went off for a severe thunderstorm warning right here in Champaign county! 🙂 I headed south of town a few miles and went west a ways so I could get a good shot of the storm. I eventually ended up in the southwest part of the county (400E, 200N).

I got out of the car and started taking pictures of this awesome looking supercell to my ESE. I had to get out my map to make sure that I was actually in Illinois and not out west in the plains. It was so cool to finally see a supercell here in Illinois without a bunch of low-level clouds in the way. I started looking around and to the west was an amazing sunset that warranted more picture taking. Around 8:00pm CDT, I turned on the weather radio to get the latest conditions and the dew point in Champaign was 70 degrees! I started heading east towards the supercell hoping to get some lightning, but never did see any from the cell. Then I heard someone calling me on the radio and realized that it was Chad. (what’s he doing back here?) 😉 He had picked up Scott Kampas and just headed east to try to intercept this nice cell I was on, but never really caught up to it. They were getting hungry, so we decided to meet up at the local McD’s for dinner.

After shooting the bull for awhile, they decided to head out to take Scott back home before making their journey back home to Indy. I arrived back home around 10:30pm CDT.

Final thoughts:
I have to say for as little distance as I went, this was one of my most nifty chases. It’s not often that we get an unobstructed view of a supercell here in Illinois. No, I didn’t see any hail, tornadoes, or even rain, but the structure of the supercell was simply awesome.

Special Thanks:
Hmmm, thanks to mother nature for finally breaking the cap so close to home. Also, thanks to Chad Gard, Joe Walters, and Scott Kampas from INCHASE for the great conversation/chaser convergence.

Total Chase Time: 3.5 hours
Total Chase Miles: 40 miles

Judging from the interesting outbreak of weather in the plains on Tuesday night, I was rather excited about our chances here in Illinois on Wednesday. The Day 2 outlook still had the entire state of Illinois in a slight risk of severe weather for Wednesday, so that was somewhat promising. After looking at all the data I could gather, I decided to make my target area in Macomb, IL. After talking with my chase partner Darin Kaiser, we both agreed that it was a good starting point.

The 13z Day 1 outlook on Wednesday still had Illinois in a slight risk, with a moderate risk further to the west into KS/OK. A quick check of data still lead me to keep my target area of Macomb. Darin showed up around 10:30am and we loaded up my gear into his truck. After making a quick stop at Best Buy to pick up some extra video tapes, we were on our way. We decided to go north towards Rantoul/Fisher and then jump on Rt.136 which would take us west to our destination. It was rather overcast and dreary as we left the area, but the further west we went, the more sun we started to see.

Around 2:00pm, we arrived in Macomb and began looking for a library. We finally found one and we were quite impressed with the computer setup. They only had a couple computers with Internet access, but they had nice LCD screens and very fast Internet connections. Anyways, we loaded up some data and not much was going on. There were some very nice cells out in Kansas, but definitely too far for us to go. There was also some stuff just north of St. Louis, but it didn’t look too promising. We made the decision to just sit tight for awhile and let things develop. We left the library and decided to drive around the area for a bit, eventually ending up a few miles to the west in Colchester. After Darin scarfed down a very messy ice cream cone, we decided to head back to Macomb to check more data.

When we got back, the new Day 1 outlook was out and it had extended the moderate risk up to NE MO. Radar showed that a few cells were firing up in central Missouri and looked to be heading to our south. Not wanting to miss out, we made the decision to move to Quincy, IL and go from there. We got to Quincy right around 5:00pm and was briefly delayed due to a train. We tried to find a library in Quincy, but decided to just keep going west and see what we could get into. At 5:45pm, we stopped in Palmyra, MO to attempt to gather some data. Darin went into the Conoco station which just happened to have TWC on the TV. While he did that, I hooked up my portable TV and attempted to find some local TV station that might have radar. Of the two stations I found, one of them had a little tornado in the bottom left corner of the screen with the word ‘watch’ above it. As we were sitting there, we noticed some nice mammatus clouds directly above us. Something was a brewin’….

After waiting through the first 15 minutes of the local newscast, they finally got around to talking about the weather. The tornado watch was west of us into central MO and the TV met didn’t seem to think severe weather would occur in the eastern part of Missouri. (very bad assumption on his part) Anyways, radar showed some storms to our west and to our east, so we weren’t sure of what to do. Our attempts to contact nowcasters went in vain, so we were on our own. We started heading back north on HWY 24 and all of a sudden my weather radio went off for a tornado warning in the county to our southwest. (bout darn time!) We made a quick u-turn and headed south towards Hannibal, MO. Once we hit Hannibal, we headed SW on HWY 24/36 towards Monroe City. As we got closer, it was obviously getting much darker to our west and lightning was starting to become visible.

At 7:13pm, we pulled off the highway about a mile east of Monroe City to observe the storm. There seemed to be a very distinct lowering, but there was a lot of rain which was obscuring our view. As the storm approached our location, the lightning really started picking up, so we decided to bail back to the east. As we were heading east, we noticed the cars heading to the west slamming on their brakes. Then the rain took over and we lost site of the cars just where we had been a few moments ago. A few miles up the road, we stopped and let the storm pass right over us. We had winds around 50-60mph, very heavy rainfall, and some very small hail. Once the storm passed, we followed it back towards Hannibal. Since it was getting late and we had a long drive ahead of us, we decided to get back into Illinois and call it a chase. As we headed through Quincy towards I-172, the flood gates opened up. (which was somewhat humorous with the weather radio talking about not driving through flooded roadways) 🙂

Anywho, we finally found the interstate and eventually got onto I-72 where we headed back east towards home. On our way back, the SPC issued a severe thunderstorm watch for parts of central Illinois, woo hoo. I was getting rather hungry as I had not eaten anything all day, so we stopped in Springfield and picked up some McD’s. (that would be McDonalds, not a mesoscale discussion) 😉 As we headed east on I-72, numerous severe thunderstorm warnings were following us back. I picked up WAND-TV out of Decatur and they were showing a nice squall line with embedded bow echos to our west. We finally made it back to my place in Champaign around midnight. I waited for the squall line to pass through the area before getting some sleep. A few severe thunderstorm warnings were issued in my neck of the woods, but nothing worth going out to look at. (though the lightning was nice) After the line passed through Champaign, I decided to shut the weather radio off to eliminate getting woken up by a flash flood warning. (which was a good idea as several were issued!)

Final thoughts:
Well, the chase wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped, but it definitely wasn’t a bust. The intercept of the tornadic cell in Missouri was very rewarding and worth the effort. It definitely beats sitting at home anyday!

Special Thanks:
Thanks again to Darin for the company and transportation, definitely makes chasing more exciting. Also would like to thank Macomb for having a nice chaser-friendly library. 🙂

Total Chase Time: 13 hours
Total Chase Miles: 550 miles

While the Day 2 outlook was very promising on Tuesday, I was still rather reluctant to make another chase attempt in southern Illinois. After looking at the models and other weather data, I figured that the SPC would move the moderate risk south of I-70 on the new Day 1. Sure enough, when I woke up, the 13z Day 1 revealed that the moderate risk had shifted south. I received an email from my chase partner, Darin Kaiser, informing me that he would rather chase in southern Illinois than sit at home all day. The SPC had already issued a severe thunderstorm watch for part of southern Illinois, so we knew we’d probably see something decent. Darin had to run some errands, but said he’d head on over to Champaign as soon as he could.

Darin arrived at my place around 10:45am. As I was loading all my gear into Darin’s vehicle, my ham antenna decided to fall apart. As I was attempting to put it back together, the very tiny set screw went flying out of my hands onto the ground. Both of us were on our hands and knees looking for this, but we just couldn’t seem to find it. I brought out a magnet and hoped I could find it that way, but unfortunately, it wasn’t any help. I looked at some of my other antennas and those screws were too big for my ham one, so I was getting really worried that I wouldn’t be able to put this thing back together. Amazingly, Darin somehow spotted this tiny screw further away on the ground that we had previously looked. (whew!) I tightly secured the antenna back into place and loaded the rest of the gear into his truck. We departed my place around 11:15am.

On our way down there, I was rather surprised to see the clouds start to fill in, as we had just had a decent amount of sunshine in Champaign. Luckily, there wasn’t too much rain associated with these clouds as there was during our previous chase to southern Illinois. We decided to head south of Mt. Vernon to our favorite little town of Ina, Illinois. Darin called Chris Novy to see if we could get some weather updates. I guess Chris was near Litchfield, Illinois where there had just been a tornado. (lucky!) Anywho, Chris said to call him back in a bit and he would go check data on his laptop. While we were sitting there, a tornado warning went out for Bond county, which was two counties to our northwest. Judging by the speed it was moving, I suggested that we not attempt to intercept it. Darin agreed, however, we decided to head back north to Mt. Vernon to await further development of storms.

We stopped at an Amoco station to fill up and make a brief pit stop. Darin called Chris again and said we were in a good position and should just wait for awhile. While we were sitting at the Amoco, another tornado warning went out for Marion county, which was the county due north of us. The cell was moving east at a whopping 55mph, so I suggested we not go after that one either. I started tuning around on my ham radio and was hearing reports of damage in the area where the tornado warning had been issued. At 2:10pm, a tornado warning was issued for Clay county, which was two counties to our northeast. (great, it’s popping all around but west of us!) Five minutes later, the SPC issued a tornado watch for southern Illinois as well as surrounding areas. (yay!)

Since a lot of the action seemed to be occurring to our east, we decided to head that way to hopefully intercept something. We headed east on HWY 50 and then heard a tornado warning for Wayne county. (yes, the one that got hammered a few weeks ago) As we got closer to Fairfield, we were seeing debris scattered all over the place that was remnants of the F3 storm a few weeks ago. As we progressed eastward, the weather radio went off several times for tornado warnings to our east. (Edwards, Wabash, Lawrence counties) We kept heading in that direction hoping to catch up to one of these possibly tornadic cells, but they were just moving too fast. We made it to Mt. Carmel, Illinois around 4:15pm and stopped there to gather our thoughts. While trying to make a decision of which way to go, the weather radio went off at 4:21pm for a tornado warning in Cumberland county. This was about three counties to our north-nortwest, so we decided to head for it despite it’s rapid movement to the east.

We headed north on RT.1 from Mt. Carmel. As we crossed over into Crawford county, we were starting to see dark ominous skies to our northwest. At 5:10pm, the weather radio went off to tell us that Crawford county was now under a severe thunderstorm warning. (time to finally dig out the camcorder!) As we entered the small town of Trimble, Illinois, we noticed some very nifty horizontal rain. We pulled off Rt.1 onto a side road and that’s when all hell broke loose. At 5:18pm, you could say we intercepted the severe storm. 🙂 The winds slammed us at first around 50-60mph and we started getting pelted by pea-sized hail. We quickly found some refuge in a farmer’s driveway next to his barn. As we were sitting there, the winds increased to an estimated 70-80mph and we continued to get pelted with pea-sized hail along with larger chunks mixed in. Visibility was about almost zero at times and Darin’s truck was wobbling back and forth in the wind.

The storm passed finally passed through around 5:25pm, so we decided to follow it. We headed north a few miles on Rt.1 and then took Rt. 154 east into Indiana. The storm seemed to have either lost intensity or was just moving too fast to keep up with it. As we headed east into Indiana, we both commented on how flooded the fields were. About that time, the weather radio alerted us to a flash flood warning in Sullivan county (IN) which is exactly where we were. Another severe thunderstorm warning went up for the counties to the south of us, but we didn’t really feel like going any further into Indiana. At this point, we decided to head back west into Illinois.

As we passed through Trimble, IL again, we both noticed this big tree that was snapped off in someone’s backyard. We noticed some people out there, so we stopped and asked them about it. Sure enough, it had just happened in that wind storm from an hour before. (just a mile away from where we were) With their permission, we took some pictures of the tree laying over in their backyard. The couple that we were talking to told us that there was a tree that landed on a truck just a few houses down. We went down the road and yet another big tree had been snapped off, which was laying on this guy’s 1978 pickup truck. They were also out looking at the damage and with their permission, we took pictures of the damage. As we made our way further down the street, we noticed other trees/branches scattered around. In my opinion, it definitely looked like a straight-line wind event rather than tornado damage.

After surviving the day on some crackers and chips, we were both getting hungry for a more solid meal. We headed into Robinson, IL and stopped at the Dairy Queen for some food. Since I was lacking food, my brain wasn’t thinking right and I almost accidentally left my food sitting there on the counter. (thought they’d put both orders in Darin’s bag, LOL) 😉 After that was over, we received word that another tornado watch had been issued for western Illinois until 11pm. (here we go again!) We headed west on Rt.33 towards Effingham. We arrived in Effingham around 8:00pm and stopped at the BP Amoco to gas up and get our bearings. Darin called Chris Novy again to get more weather updates. Apparently Chris and a few other chasers were in the Edwardsville area, which was three counties to our west. Not wanting to miss out on any action, we decided to give it a shot and go west.

We headed west on I-70 and as we approached Pocahontas, IL, the weather radio went off for a severe thunderstorm warning for Bond and Madison counties, which is exactly where we were. We took the exit just east of Highland and found a side road to watch the storm from. It was weird to see fog, stars, and lightning all at the same time. 😉 We waited for the storm to hit us and when it did, it was just some heavy rain. We drove west into Highland and waited there for a bit to see if any other cells would fire up. We couldn’t see much in town, so we headed back east to our previous spot off I-70. There was some lightning to our north and to our south, but no warnings were issued and the cells seemed to be weakening. Since Darin had to be at work early in the morning, we decided to call it a chase and head back to Champaign. On our way back, a cell did go severe in Edgar/Clark counties, but it also died out rapidly. We made it back to my house around 12:30am and noticed how cold and windy it was, brrrrr! 🙂

Final thoughts:
Well, we missed out on the tornadoes to our north and east, but I’m definitely glad we chased today. The severe cell in Crawford county was really impressive and definitely made our day. 🙂

Special Thanks:
Once again, I want to thank Darin for providing the transportation and great conversation throughout the trip. I also want to thank the residents in Trimble, IL for giving us permission to take pictures of their property damage. Finally, thanks to Chris Novy for providing some weather updates during our chase.

Total Chase Time: 13 hours
Total Chase Miles: 600 miles

The Day 2 outlook on Saturday morning indicated that part of central and southern Illinois would be in a moderate risk of severe weather. However, with the bust that occurred with the moderate risk in the plains on Saturday, I was a bit skeptical about our chances on Sunday. I decided to email my local chasing pal Darin Kaiser to find out if he wanted to chase on Sunday. Sure enough, he was ready and willing to go. Since my vehicle is old and fragile, we decided that we’d take Darin’s much newer truck. 🙂

I was planning on getting up around 7:00am CDT to prepare myself for the big chase. However, my weather radio had other plans for me and woke me up just after 5:00am CDT to alert me to a flash flood warning. (maybe I should actually program my weather radio to only go off for my county??) 😉 Anyways, too anxious to sleep, I got up and started analyzing whatever data I could find. The latest Day 1 stated that the moderate risk had been downgraded to a slight risk. (bummer!) After mulling over the data, I decided that we should target an area between Effingham – Mt. Vernon (IL) – Vincennes (IN).

A little before 9:00am CDT, Darin arrived at my house and I started transferring my chase gear over to his truck. According to the 9am weather observation from Champaign-Willard Airport, it was a chilly 44 degrees when we departed Champaign. As we headed south on I-57, we were pretty much stuck in overcast skies with light-moderate rainfall. Around 10:45am CDT, the weather radio went off and let us know of a severe thunderstorm watch for southern Illinois. (woo hoo!) We decided to stop in Salem to gas up and attempt to figure out which way to head next. We flipped on the local NOAA weather radio station and started gathering data. They mentioned that it was in the 60s in Salem, but already in the 70s just 25 miles to the south in Mt. Vernon. We noticed somewhat of a cell to our east, so we headed towards it on US 50. We weren’t finding too much that way, so we decided to head back to Salem and just go south from there.

Around 1:30pm CDT, we hopped off I-57 at a little town called Ina. We made a pit stop at the local BP gas station and got a few snacks to keep us going. The weather radio informed us that storms in Missouri would be crossing over into Illinois after 2:00pm CDT. We noticed that a cell was building to our west, so we tried to find a spot with good visibility to examine it more closely. Right down the road was Rend Lake College, which provided a much better viewing spot than most others we tried. We watched some towers go up and took some pictures while they did. While we were watching this cell, the weather radio went off to announce that a tornado watch had been issued. (double woo hoo!!) 🙂 We saw another cell further to our west, so we jogged south on I-57 to HWY 154 and headed west.

Around 2:50pm CDT, we encountered a nice looking cell west of Pickneyville in Perry County. As we drove closer to the storm, the weather radio went off again telling us that this nice cell we were looking at was now a severe thunderstorm! 😉 We pulled off HWY 154 on a side road and attempted to turn around, but Darin let the truck roll too far back into the ditch and got stuck. The storm was rapidly approaching our position, so we had to get out of there quickly. Darin put his foot on the gas and floored it, but all we were getting was rapidly spinning tires and a horrible burning rubber smell. Unfortunately, neither one of us was smart enough to keep the camcorder rolling during this incident. Finally, we got enough momentum and made our way out of the ditch and back on to the road just in time. We crossed HWY 154 and parked on CR 500E to wait out the storm. As we were sitting there, all hell broke loose. The rain cut loose, the wind blasted us at an estimated 50-60mph, and then we had the hail. It started out as pea-sized hail and then got bigger and bigger and eventually ended up between half-dollar size and golfball!! We decided to bail from our position and find a farmhouse/tree to shelter us from the hail. The cell quickly passed our location and the sun once again popped out. A few minutes after the cell has passed, we noticed the very visible hail shaft to our east. (someone else was getting nailed!) 😉

We started heading back east towards another cell that looked somewhat promising. At 3:40pm CDT, the weather radio went off again stating that a doppler indicated tornado warning had been issued for northern Franklin county, which just happened to be the cell we were behind. Unfortunately, this puppy was moving at 50mph to the east, so it was almost impossible to catch up with it. We did manage to spot a well-defined wall cloud on the cell, but due to the terrain and trees, we were unable to track it. At 4:30pm CDT, we stopped off at a rest area for another pit stop. This particular rest stop had a very slick DTN weather station with someone actually there to operate it. Most of the activity was well to our NE, so we decided to just call it a day and head back home. We arrived back at my house in Champaign around 7:45pm CDT. As I was unloading my gear, Darin was inspecting his truck for hail damage and sure enough, he located several battle scars. 😉 (gotta break it in someday, why not today!)

Final thoughts:
Despite the terrible terrain, low probability by the SPC of severe weather, and early morning cloud cover, I’d say the chase was very successful. We saw a couple wall clouds, some mammatus clouds, strong winds, and last but not least, we had hail! 😉 It definitely was more exciting than sitting at home doing nothing all day. I will attempt, however, from venturing that far south in Illinois for another chase as the terrain and trees make it really difficult to safely chase.

Special Thanks:
Big thanks to Darin for providing the transportation for the chase today. Every time I chase with him, we seem to get some really exciting storms. 😉 Of course, it’s nice that he is willing to put his vehicle in harms way of the hail. Hail dents add character!! 🙂

Total Chase Time: 10 hours
Total Chase Miles: 550 miles