Video and additional photos on my weather blog.
Sometimes you're dumpster diving for table scraps, and end up with a chunk of filet mignon.
Day 4 of our 12-member group's storm chasing trip in an Omega-blocked, northwest flow pattern yielded a High Plains-quality supercell with multiple rotating wall cloud structures and several funnel clouds over central Illinois. The storm became tornado-warned right as we were watching it between Monticello and Manoa (between Decatur and Champaign) and we saw several lowerings extremely close to the ground. We'll be reviewing video to see if a tornado might have touched down.
We targeted the southern edge of the slight risk area in Illinois, hoping to catch at least a good MCS shelf cloud, but hoping that a cell on the western edge could catch enough backing winds and CAPE to blow up into a supercell. That's exactly what happened! We had to intercept the cell running west from I-57 south of Champaign, a quick move under a southeast-moving supercell pumping out large hail.
We were able to stay in one place for about half an hour watching multiple rotating wall clouds move in front of us like trains on a track. We experienced two RFDs ... the first a warm one, the second cold ... as the storm moved by us. We did have to make a mad dash west toward Decatur at the end as the western fringe of the storm, with some visible rotation, edged overhead.
We're just now peeling ourselves off the ceiling from this giddy high of an amazing storm in what we feared might be a dead 2-week trip.
Oh, and did I mention that our radar operators are high school students! Great experience for an amazing group of high school and college weather enthusiasts from Virginia and North Carolina.