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March 1, 2004 – Chase to Northeast IL

Finally, a slight risk somewhere in Illinois! I had been watching this day on the models for the past week. While it would have been nice for this to happen on Sunday, I figured I’d do my best to get a chase in anyway. The Day 1 outlook had northern and central IL in a slight risk with the main threat being large hail and damaging winds. (better than 4-8″ of snow right?!) Unlike my Jan 3rd bust to Missouri, we actually had some CAPE forecasted! (about freaking time!) There wasn’t the nice pool of mid-60 degree dew points to work with, but with the strong low pressure I figured it might still fire something. Unfortunately I couldn’t allocate the entire day to chasing as I had to work, so I had to do what I could with the time after work. Luckily I was able to work through lunch and leave an hour early.

As soon as the clock struck 3:00pm, I bolted out the door and headed home to get the gear. As I was setting up the laptop/GPS, I plugged in the wifi card to get a last minute weather update before heading out. There wasn’t too much on radar other than stuff way up in northern IL and southern WI, which was a tad out of my range for this chase day. I continued to focus on my target area of Kankakee and see what would happen. I finally departed Champaign at 3:30pm and made the trek north on I-57. On the way up, I noticed lots of junk trying to go up but nothing that made me want to stop. As I approached the Kankakee area, I finally encountered some decent amounts of rainfall. For about 5 seconds, I had some small hail pelting the car that got me all excited again. 🙂 I headed north of Kankakee to get out into the country and observed a really spiffy sunlit cloud structure which begged to have its picture taken!

Stan Olson 2004, Chase Logs, Weather No Comments
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January 3, 2004 – Chase to Southeast Missouri

No this isn’t a typo, I really did chase in January! After looking at the models for days regarding this day, I really wanted to chase. Some ingredients were in place, but like the last chase of 2003 we were missing the beloved CAPE. (must be those darn budget cuts!) Anyway, dew points looked to push into the 60s and temps were pushing mid-upper 60s. (mmm, moisture return!) Luckily this is the weekend I wasn’t scheduled to work, so I was free to chase. The SPC was also watching this area, but wouldn’t go as far as issuing a slight risk. However, they did put a small area of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas in a 2% tornado threat. It doesn’t sound like much, but when SDS is in full bloom you’ll take any positive news you can get! After mulling over the weather data, I decided to initially target the little town of Sikeston in southeast Missouri. I was anxious to see what exactly Missouri would ‘show-me’. 😉

Normally I would never consider a chase like this mainly due to my vehicle issues. However, thanks to the off-season acquisition of a brand new vehicle (courtesy of my chase pal/car salesman Darin Kaiser!), I was able to easily consider chasing today. I got up around 6:00 AM to check data and things still looked promising. (however the SPC still didn’t give me my slight risk!) I loaded up the chase gear and headed out around 7:30 AM. I headed south on I-57 for quite awhile until I hit the rest area south of Salem, IL. After a quick break, I decided to try out my cell phone data connection. I checked radar and satellite and I was still seeing clearing skies in southern Missouri, so that was very good news. I left the rest area and continued my journey on I-57, noting the constant overcast skies with a hint of clearing to my south. I arrived in Sikeston, MO a little after 12:00 PM and decided to stay there for a bit. I grabbed a bite to eat at McD’s (not to be confused with the non-existent mesoscale discussion!) and then utilized my unlimited weekend minutes via my data connection to assess the situation.

Stan Olson 2004, Chase Logs, Weather No Comments
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May 10, 2003 – Tornado intercept in Western Illinois

What a week of weather across the midwest and plains, but it wasn’t done yet. One more final burst of severe weather was in store before some calm finally rolled in. Would Illinois be in a path for this deadly destruction and wild weather? The SPC certainly thought so when they issued their unprecedented fourth high risk of the week on Saturday morning. The first morning Day 1 outlook just had part of northern and central Illinois in the high risk, with the rest of the state in a moderate risk. Further updates greatly expanded the area of high risk to stretch all the way from northeast Oklahoma to Ohio. The last high risk we’ve had here in Illinois was back in October 24th of 2001 and I remember what happened that day. Given the amount of severe weather throughout the week, I had very little doubt that this high risk would pan out.

The day started off very active with numerous storms moving throughout the state with many being severe and even tornadic. My early attempt to chase these was in vain as they were just too far out of my reach. I then noticed how quickly the skies cleared out and made way for the lovely sun to heat up the atmosphere. While this somewhat provided a cap, I figured that would actually help to get some really good storms late in the afternoon/evening. With my car not in the best of shape, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to chase. While looking at data on the computer, I received a voice mail from Matt Hartman and Joe Walters from INCHASE. They were just west of town here and well in range of the local 2m repeater. They were heading towards Springfield and then would check data from there. As they reached the range of the repeater, we said our goodbyes and I wished them well on their attempt to chase in a high risk area.

Stan Olson 2003, Chase Logs, Weather No Comments
May 10, 2003 – Tornado intercept in Western IllinoisRead more

April 30, 2003 – Tornado intercept in Northwest IL

Today’s setup looked very interesting and promising, but would I be able to chase today? The models seemed to be all over the place with the system, so I wasn’t sure where this thing was going to strike. The wonderful CAPE values were forecasted to make a welcomed return to the area with values around 1500-3000 depending on the location. Dewpoints were also looking good and were on their way to 60+ without even looking at the models. Lifted indices were also forecasted to be anywhere between -4 and -8, so there was definitely some very nice instability. Finally, the helicity values weren’t too good in central IL, but in northern and northwestern IL they were looking much better with values projected to be between 200-350.

My chase partner Darin Kaiser usually has Wednesday’s off from work, but he had several folks set up appointments with him so chasing was put on hold for awhile. I continued to monitor the situation throughout the morning and pondered several target areas in case I could chase. Obviously, I knew we couldn’t chase in northwest Missouri or southwest Iowa as it was just too far away. I kept looking at northeast Missouri and southeast Iowa though as the models were showing some promising signs for that area. The SPC Day 1 outlook painted a swath of moderate risk from eastern Kansas to northeast Illinois. I wasn’t too confident in that forecast, but decided to see how it all panned out. As I was eating lunch, an MCD was issued for the area regarding possible thunderstorm development.

Stan Olson 2003, Chase Logs, Weather No Comments
April 30, 2003 – Tornado intercept in Northwest ILRead more

April 16, 2003 – Chase to southwest IL

I had been watching this day on the models for awhile now and was anxious to see what would happen now that it was finally here. The early morning Day 1 (06z) outlook painted a small moderate risk area from extreme SW IL to SE MO. This was the general area I was wanting to head to, so I was pretty excited. Unfortunately the moderate risk didn’t last long as the SPC downgraded it to a slight risk, stating that the risk of severe weather didn’t warrant a moderate risk. (blah!) Dewpoints were only forecasted to be in the mid-50s, while helicity values were looking much better around 200-300. I won’t even talk about CAPE since it was nearly non-existent. 😉 The CAP from the ILX and SGF 12z soundings was pretty high, so stuff was not likely to fire up until sunset or thereafter. Despite the limited ingredients, Darin and I decided to give it a go and see what happened. Our target area was the chasing hotspot of SW IL, better known as Pinckneyville, IL. 🙂

Darin and I left my place here in Champaign at 11:00am and headed south on I-57. Not much was going on with the weather at this time, just some partly cloudy conditions and very windy. We stopped south of Salem, IL at a rest stop to take a break from the non-stop driving. Inside they had a weather monitor that showed temps, radar, and a few other things. There appeared to be a small squall line that had developed just west of us, but we had no intentions of chasing it. After grabbing a Pepsi and some Potato Skins (great chaser snack food!), we continued south on I-57. We arrived in Mt. Vernon around 1:30pm and decided to look around for a computer w/Internet access to get some weather data. After going 0 for 2 at the local Staples and Radio Shack, we explored the main drag for the town library. Once we found it, we went inside and asked about using a computer. We were very happy that all we needed was a driver’s license to use the computers.

Stan Olson 2003, Chase Logs, Weather No Comments
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