06/07/08 DISC: SD/NE/IA/IL/MN/MO/WI/MI/IN/KS

[Jesse Risley]

Quite a surprise event unfolded in the south Chicago suburbs today. A decent video has already been posted on Youtube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWRuwFSnXJ8

This footage shows the Odell (Livingston County) tornado from this afternoon. I assume we'll continue to see reports for the CHI area through the weekend. The damage survey should be interesting too.

 

[J West]

No chase today, but I did get some baseball-sized hail. You guys in the plains may laugh, but up here in the Great Lakes we don't usually get hail that large.

So I threw one in the freezer

 

[Donald Giuliano]

I've already received some PMs about the gustnado action we saw yesterday near Fort Dodge, IA, so I figured I'd put up a post here to move the discussion into a more public area so everyone can join in.

I don't think what we saw can easily be classified as either a gustnado or tornado, but if forced to choose between the two would certainly call it a gustnado. My reasoning for this is because despite the fact that it seemed easily capable of doing F0 damage and was very long-lived (something like 15 minutes), it did not appear to be connected to any persistent rotation in the cloud base and had the appearance of a glorified, multi-vortex dust devil. The video is now on YouTube, so everyone can make their own judgements, and if enough people are interested would be happy to post a longer, more complete version of the video as well:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eFeO-G3o9mg

 

[Skip Talbot]

The activity on that line looked like it was being created by mesovortices rather than mesocyclones. Gino Izzi gave a talk on the topic at Fermilab this year and some of the radar returns he showed were very similar to what I saw west of Fort Dodge when you guys were reporting that gustnado.

 

[Bill Hark]

Chicago area tornado

Some of the best video that I've seen has been from amateurs. This guy had a relaxing "chase" sitting on his porch and filmed the recent tornado that grazed the southern Chicago suburbs. Unfortunately, it was sent in for free as a "i report." OK, I'm a bit jealous:

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-32515

Bill Hark

 

[James Langford]

That is incredible video. The guy is so calm throughout the whole thing.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

An excellent video here from a train conductor near Chicago Heights:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0c8_1212936095

RUN AWAY!

 

[Danny Neal]

Chicago Area Tornadoes

An nice little write up and link from the NWS LOT. Seems like the low LCL's on this day led to every tornado appearing large and dangerous (which I guess is true) but not particularly strong. As Skip Talbot and I were discussing last night.