StansWeather.net

Before I went to bed on Tuesday night, the SPC Day 2 was showing a moderate risk for NW IL and then a slight risk for the rest of the state. After being in a slight risk for the past several days, I didn’t think much of it at first. When I woke up, the 13z Day 1 outlook was still showing a moderate risk for NW IL.

When I got back from class at 11am, I was reading through my emails and noticed an MCD for parts of E.IA/NE.MO/NW.IL stating that the SPC was going up grade this area to a high risk. My jaw dropped when I saw this and I immediately began looking at all the weather data I could find. The updated Day 1 outlook did indeed reveal the upgrade to high risk. Scott Kampas (KB9VVP) popped online and he was telling me that he would probably target the Galesburg/Quad Cities area. Not wanting to drive that far, I decided my target area would be Macomb, IL which is SW of Galesburg.

After making sure I had all my gear, I loaded it into the car and headed out around 1pm. I took Rt. 121 to Decatur where I stopped to eat lunch with George (N9IPO), a storm spotter/chaser in Macon county. (nothing like a steakburger to get ya going for a chase) On the way up there, I received a call from good ol’ Chad Gard from INCHASE. He gave me a quick weather update and I told him I would be heading to the Macomb area.

After lunch, I headed west towards Springfield on I-72. On the way over, I made contact with my dad on the 146.985 repeater in Clinton. He gave me a quick radar update on the way over, but it still wasn’t producing anything severe. When I got to Springfield, I decided to call Blake Naftel and see where he was. I believe he said he was near Leroy, IL and was targeting Table Grove, IL. (SE of Macomb) I told him that I would meet him up there and go from there.

I departed Springfield at 4:30pm and headed west on Hwy. 97. I started running into some heavy rain and wind, but it definitely wasn’t anything to write home about. (why’d you mention it then?) 🙂 I finally intercepted Rt. 136 near U.S. 24 at 5:45pm. The clouds were starting to disappear and make way for a sunny afternoon. I continued west on Rt. 136 and made it into Table Grove at 6:00pm. After a quick pit stop, I headed a few miles north of town and stopped out in the country to take a look at the sky. I decided to call Blake again to see where he was. Unfortunately, he was west of Dietrich, IL and wasn’t going to continue towards my location due to the ‘major bust’. His cell phone battery was dying on him, so I let him go and pondered what to do next. I rolled down the window and noticed it was much cooler and dryer, indicating to me that the cold front had already passed through. I was a bit disappointed at this point and decided to make the trek back home.

On my way home, I started seeing some cells off to my east. I couldn’t tell if they were new cells or dying cells, but they did look somewhat impressive. [multiple cells picture] (North of Kilbourne, IL looking East) Using the camcorder remote control, I carefully zoomed in on one of them while driving down the road. (don’t try this at home!) [zoomed-in cell picture] I tried to go after them for a little bit, but they were just too far away so I gave up that idea. I went back through Springfield and was going to fill up the gas tank, but they wanted $1.93 / gallon for the premium. I decided that I had enough to get me to Decatur, where I thought it would be cheaper. WRONG! [gas prices picture] I ended up spending $30 to fill up my tank, something that I hadn’t had to do since last year. ARGH! Anyways, as I was getting back in my car, I heard the sound of screeching of tires behind me. I spin around and the 2 cop cars that were there go chasing after this guy. Of course, my camcorder wasn’t rolling, otherwise it would of been quite nifty. (needless to say, I got the heck out of there.) 🙂

On my way back down Rt. 121 towards Mattoon/Charleston, I started seeing lightning to my SE. It was way off in the distance, so there was no photographic possibilities. I finally arrived back in Charleston at 10:45pm. Powered on my computer and had over 200 emails, most of them weather related!

Final thoughts:
Well, I was really hoping this high risk would pan out today. Sometimes you have better luck with a slight risk than you do with a high risk. High risks seem to be make or break. If they make, you end up with a severe outbreak. If they break, well, you get sunny skies and a lot of frustrated chasers. I was really hoping to finally meet Blake Naftel, but the weather just didn’t cooperate with us. Maybe we’ll get another chance later in the season.

As for warnings, I never did hear of any for IL. It looks like Iowa got the outbreak and unfortunately there was at least one confirmed death and lots of damage. Once again, you have to remember to keep stuff in perspective and respect the non-chasers. Chasers never want to see people hurt/killed or see houses and other buildings destroyed. No one can control the weather, we just have to live with it. My thoughts and prayers go out to those people in Iowa who lost loved ones or incurred property damage.

Special Thanks:
I’d like to thank Blake Naftel and Chad Gard for the information updates and the short chats. Also like to thank my dad for the QSOs/weather updates throughout the chase.

Total Chase Time: 9.5 hours
Total Chase Miles: 363 miles
Gas price per gallon: $1.93 (Premium @ Amoco in Decatur)

After a disappointing day/night of waiting on Monday, I decided to go to bed around 1am. The storms that were moving in from Missouri had loss their strength and we just ended up with a little lightning and some gusty winds. So while I’m dreaming of better chase days, I suddenly wake up to the sound of my weather radio blaring off. At first, I figured it was a flood watch/warning, not a severe thunderstorm warning. When the warning came on, it not only was a severe thunderstorm warning, but it was for Coles county! I quickly powered on the computer and loaded up radar and sure enough, there was this nice little cell heading up towards me.

I grabbed my gear and headed out about 8:35am. I headed south out of Charleston on Rt.130. Wasn’t too much activity other than some rain and occasional lightning. After passing through Greenup, I continued going south on Rt.130. At 9:01am, the weather radio went off again with a severe thunderstorm warning for Jasper county. Just a few minutes after the warning went off, I entered Jasper county. (not bad eh?) About a minute after entering Jasper county, the storm let loose with the rain. Visibility was reduced dramatically and I had to slow down in order to see where the heck I was going. As the rain let up, I heard and saw one little hailstone smack the front window. At first, I was like ‘oh no, here we go, trying to be like Keenan now!’. Luckily, that was the only hail I encountered, falling from the sky anyways.

I made my way into Newton around 9:20am and continued south on Rt.130. About 4 miles south of Newton, I started seeing some really low fog. (fog? I see fog all the time Stan, what’s so different about this fog?) Well, this fog occurred due to the melting of the hail accumulation. Not only did I notice the obvious fog, but I also noticed little clumps of hail on the side of the road and also scattered throughout the fields. (if you look on the left side of the road in the picture, you can see these hail clumps!) After my encounter with the hail-fog, I started seeing cloud features of a storm to my east. There was a lot of scud, but next to the rain shaft was a possible wall cloud. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to zoom in on this and study it closer so I’ll never know if it was a wall cloud or just scud. (look at the left-most lowering)

Around 9:50am I made my way into Olney, IL and continued going south until I heard the weather radio go off yet again. This time it was a severe thunderstorm warning for Lawrence county, which was just to my east. I headed back towards Olney and then went east on US 50. I started surfing around on the radio and found a spotter network somewhere over in Indiana, but they weren’t reporting too much. (good to hear the net activated though) After trying to catch up with the storm and not having any luck, I decided to abort this storm and head back home.

As I headed back through Newton, I decided to surf around and see if I could hit any repeaters. I kerchunked the 442.250 repeater in Decatur, IL and it came up pretty well. I gave a shout out to a friend of mine over there and he responded. At first, I was running full power (35 watts), but seeing the signal strength, I decided to drop it down to low power (5 watts). When I came back to him, he said that I sounded just fine and was booming into the repeater. After looking at the map, Newton is 70+ miles (as the crow flies) from Decatur. At the same time, Scott (KB9VVP) over in Pekin was also able to receive this repeater from 60 miles away! Pretty nifty band opening if you ask me! Anyways, I didn’t see much on the way back home other than some light rain. Got back to Charleston around 11:40am and finally got to see some radar. More storms were starting to move in from Missouri, triggering more warnings in the same areas I was just in earlier.

Final thoughts:
Well, I must say, after the countless disappointing chances we’ve had this year, this little chase finally broke the streak. It was really good to get back out there and see storms again! I also found out there’s still a few things I need to prepare for next time, but I’ll be ready to go. It was also really cool to know that there were spotters nets active in the area I was in. (I wish I could say that about southern IL)

BTW, SDS can kiss my … 🙂

Special Thanks:
Hmmmm. I’d like to thank my weather radio for waking my butt up this morning. Had it not been for the alert, I never would have chased this morning. (probably still be asleep too!)

Total Chase Time: 3 hours
Total Chase Miles: 165 miles

While some people prefer to spend their spring break in Cancun or Florida, I’d rather spend it right here in IL. (well, not really, but I don’t have the $$$ to go on vacation) Anyways, what would be more fitting than to be able to chase right here in IL during spring break? I had joked around with the idea for quite awhile, but I never figured that it would really happen.

After going over the models on Sunday evening, I decided that if they held true, southern IL would be an ideal target area. I went to bed early and woke up at 3 am. While I wanted to get up a bit earlier than normal, 3 am is not what I had in mind. As I constantly yawned, I flipped on the computer and loaded up the Day 1 outlook which had been updated at midnight. That outlook showed a slight risk stretching from just south of Chicago across central and southern IL. Based on the models that I had looked at, I thought that the SPC was pushing the slight risk area just a bit too far north. I poured over the weather data while watching TWC very early in the morning. The 7:00 am Day 1 outlook finally came out and they had moved the slight risk to a more reasonable area which just included southern IL. From that and the model data, I decided to make my target area Mt. Vernon, IL. Like the February 24th chase, there were a ton of clouds in the state. Looking at the satellite loops, it appeared that this time the clouds were being penetrated by the sun.

I waited around all morning closely monitoring the weather situation. I was hoping that the SPC would issue a watch for southern IL or at least a mesoscale discussion. I did hang around to catch the 2:00pm Day 1 outlook and it still showed Southern IL in a slight risk. After looking one more time at the satellite loop, I decided that I would go ahead and head south towards my target area of Mt. Vernon. So after programming the GPS, I loaded up my gear and headed south on I-57 from Champaign around 2:30pm. Judging from the fog and clouds in this area, I thought I never would see the sun. However, once I got around the Mattoon area, the sun slowly started to break through and I was starting to see some clearing to my southwest.

Around 4:00pm and just about 20 miles north of Salem, I talked to a fellow ham, Tom (N9PLB), on the Toldeo (442.300) repeater. I was almost out of range of this repeater, but was able to hear Tom tell me that there still wasn’t anything showing up on radar down south. At 4:25pm, I made a stop at the rest stop just south of Salem. After grabbing a snack, I turned on my TV and attempted to find a station that was showing weather information, but there wasn’t any. As I was chowing down on my bag of potato skins, I looked out the window and saw this squirrel rummaging around in the parking lot for food. I took a chip out of the bag and flung it out the window towards the squirrel. After seeing this, the squirrel ran over and grabbed the chip and chowed down. I gave him a couple more chips while I grabbed my video camera and took some pictures of this silly creature. (see Chad, I take care of the animals on my chases..) 🙂

ANYWAYS… I departed the rest area around 4:45pm and continued south on I-57. I reached my original target area of Mt. Vernon at 5pm, but decided to just keep going south. I figured at this point, if anything was going to develop it’d be a bit further south. I continued south on I-57 and reached Marion, IL at 5:40pm. I kept monitoring the ham repeaters and NOAA WX radio, but I still wasn’t hearing anything about any thunderstorm activity. Once again, I continued south on I-57. At 6:00pm, I stopped off at another rest area about 7 miles east of Jonesboro. Since it was news time, I turned on the TV and searched for some weather information. I found KFVS-12 CBS out of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They were about to end their newscast but a severe thunderstorm had developed over in Missouri. Radar showed it moving ENE, so if it stayed together, it would eventually get to IL. I also caught another station showing this line of storms that had just formed and were moving into IL.

I decided that I was going to head back north. I left the rest area around 6:35 and headed south a couple of miles to the nearest exit where I could turn around and head north. I got off at mile marker 30 exit and stopped off at the Shell to get some gas. After filling up, I headed back north on I-57. I scanned through the NOAA WX frequencies and found one in Missouri that was mentioning a few severe thunderstorm warnings. I started seeing some clouds light up from lightning, but couldn’t see any strikes. At this point, I decided to head home and hopefully I’d be able to follow one of the storms back. Apparently, I was too far in front of the storms which is why I didn’t see much. I finally arrived back to Champaign around 10:15pm.

Final thoughts:
While this was the 2nd bust in the last 3 weeks, I still enjoyed the chase. It was nice to just drive across the state and at least explore some of the scenery. (ok, so it’s not tropical island type scenery, but it works for me.) 🙂 I think if I had waited a little while down south, I could of seen the line of storms pass over. None of them went severe in IL and no watches were ever issued. There was one MCD issued for Southern IL around 6:13pm, but I didn’t have access to it until after I got home. On another note: my newly installed TV proved to be a decent asset on this chase, though I should look into getting an external antenna for it.

One thing that frustrated me on this chase was the weather data at the rest areas. All of the rest areas I went to had these DTN weather centers there, but they were a good 2-3 hours old. Why do they even bother to put these weather monitors in the rest areas if they can’t provide updated information. I’m not sure if this is a DTN issue or if it’s a state of IL issue, but something needs to be done about it.

Special Thanks:
I’d like to thank my vehicle for running smoothly during this chase. I wasn’t sure that I’d even get to chase without going in someone else’s car this year, but it seems that the tune-up it got the other day really fixed the problem.

Total Chase Time: 8 hours
Total Chase Miles: 420 miles
Gas price per gallon: $1.69 (Premium @ Shell)

Well, it’s been a long off-season and the SDS is almost too unbearable! After last year’s dismal chase season, this year brings new anticipation and excitement. It also gives everyone a chance to improve on their mistakes from last year. Whatever the case may be, I’m ready for spring and ready to see what awesome spectacles that mother nature is going to dish out.

After watching all the forecast models over the past week and a half, it looked like Saturday would be the best chance for severe weather in IL. A few days before, TWC decided to make up this graphic that had the words ‘severe outbreak’ slapped across part of the midwest. While I feel that the word outbreak might have been a bit extreme, I still felt that something could develop out of this. Despite it being a Saturday, I decided to make the sacrifice and get up around 6:30am to check weather data. *yawn* When the 7:00am Day 1 outlook came out, it had the southern half of IL in a slight risk and just to the SW of IL there was a moderate risk of severe weather. After checking that, I pulled up some radar and satellite maps to see what it was looking like. The satellite loops were one of my main concerns because there was a ton of clouds and they didn’t seem to be burning off or moving away. I did notice a little bit of clearing in southern IL, but it didn’t continue that pattern for very long.

I received an email from Chad Gard (INCHASE) saying that him and Joe were heading this way and were going to stop here at EIU and check the data. While I was waiting for him, I constantly monitored the weather conditions and waited on possible watches to be issued. I also checked the Special Weather Statements from Lincoln and St. Louis to see what they thought about the situation. Lincoln stated that the main risk in IL would probably be damaging straight-line winds. St. Louis mentioned that their greatest risk would once again be damaging straight-line winds, but large hail could also be a problem too. Both also mentioned the fact that the storms would probably be in the form of a squall line instead of supercells. While not the greatest thing to chase, I thought that some isolated cells might form ahead of the main line.

Chad and Joe arrived here around 12:30 P.M. and we started checking data and tried to figure out a target area. I was thinking somewhere in the St. Louis area since it was close to the moderate risk. Chad was thinking somewhere SE of St. Louis, that way we wouldn’t get into any traffic congestion and there would hopefully be some good flat areas. We finally decided on Pinckneyville to be our target area because of the road network in and around the area. After remembering that Scott and Keenan were heading to St. Louis, I decided to call Scott on his cell phone and see if he wanted to venture a bit further to the SE of St. Louis and converge on Pinckneyville. Scott and Keenan agreed to meet us down there and we’d go from there.

To conserve money and gas, we all decided to pile into Chad’s lovely new car and head out. I brought some of my gear along, which included 2 antennas in addition to the 2 that were already on Chad’s trunk. Minutes after getting on I-57, my scanner antenna decided that it didn’t like its new home and consequently flew off. We quickly pulled over and rescued the little fella and put him safely inside to protect from further humiliation and damage. Anyways, once we got going again we drove south on I-57 all the way down to Rt. 154 and went west towards Pinckneyville. Throughout the voyage down there, it pretty much remained mostly cloudy with just a few glimpses of sunlight. We finally arrived in Pinckneyville and gave Scott a call on the ham rig. He surprised us by coming back to us and telling us that they had just come into Pinckneyville and would be at our location in a matter of minutes. So imagine 5 chasers, 2 vehicles loaded with antennas and gear sitting in front of a Casey’s in this small town. (I think we scared the lady working inside!)

We sat there for a while monitoring the radios and sky with nothing much going on. There was a Severe Thunderstorm Watch issued for parts of Missouri and Illinois (the part we were in), but nothing had gone severe yet. Scott attempted to locate some weather data on his TV, but all he could find was golf and some cooking show. 🙂 I decided to give John Jensen (SCOA) a call on my cell to get some information. After talking with him, we decided to sit tight and wait for something to develop. He called us back after a while and informed us that a couple cells had rapidly developed to our west and were moving NE. We all got excited and jumped in the cars and headed that way and tried to intercept the storms.

We headed west on 154 until we reached the town of Sparta. We decided to head north on 4 and then zig zag back east a bit. When we did this, we ended up turning down this road which ended up to be a long driveway. This was hilarious because we had all this technology (2 GPS navigation systems and a detailed road map) and we still ended up on the wrong road. “It’s like Bob’s road.” 🙂 Anyways, once we got back on track, we headed north on 153 for quite a ways until we reached Rt. 15. Heading east on 15, we entered the town of Nashville. (yes, Illinois, not Tennessee) From there, we headed north on 127 watching the skies as we did. We weren’t seeing much since it was dark, but occasionally we’d see a few lightning strikes.

We stopped in Carlyle at the McD’s to check on data again. I called John again and he told me that a lot of it was dying out but we still could probably get some good lightning. We headed north to 1800N and sat there and watched it rain. (why Chad decided to roll down my window instead of his still remains to be seen) We saw some lightning, but it really wasn’t that impressive or frequent. Once again, we headed back to 127 and went north hoping to see something a bit better. John called us back again and informed us that there was a new Severe Thunderstorm Watch that included parts of Southern IL. We were well north of the watch area and with it getting late, we decided to shut it down and head for home. After saying our goodbyes, Chad, Joe, and I headed east on I-70 at Greenville.

On our way back to Charleston, we noticed the lightning becoming a bit more frequent. The rain was very persistent throughout the trip home, though the Rain-X that Chad had on his window was working very well. We got into Charleston a little before 10:00pm CST and I unloaded all my gear. After a quick bathroom break, Chad and Joe headed home to Indy.

Final thoughts:
Well, despite the chase being a bust weather-wise, it was really good to finally meet Chad, Joe, and Keenan. It was great to get back out there and give it a whirl after months of non-severe weather. I think we all learned something and it was definitely good practice for what hopes to be a very active season. I think the best quote of the day by everyone in the group was “It’s February.” Had this been April/May, the storms probably would have been much more intense and severe. We did notice that the NOAA Weather Radio coverage was superb throughout the chase. (we could pick up multiple transmitters even without an external antenna.) The amateur radio coverage, however, was pretty much non-existent in that area. The only repeater I could hit was the one in Carbondale and even then I didn’t hear any SKYWARN or spotter nets. Had there been severe weather to report, we would have been limited to the cell phone. (and even then, the coverage drops out in certain hilly areas)

The first severe thunderstorm watch for IL never did produce any severe weather. I believe the later one did, but I’m not sure of the details on it. Most of the really bad weather was down in Mississippi where at least 7 people lost their lives and tons of damage was reported. It really puts stuff into perspective when on one hand you enjoy chasing and watching these severe weather wonders of nature, but on the other hand you hate to see it destroy property and injure/kill people.

P.S. Would someone tell Chad that he was the only one seeing the frogs! Thanks! 🙂

Special thanks to:
John Jensen for providing us with nowcasting via the cell phone. I’d also like to thank Chad and Joe for going out of their way to pick me up for this chase. When we bag one this year, the steak is on me! 😉

Total Chase Time: 8 hours
Total Chase Miles: 335 miles (that’s for me, more for the others)