• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

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

Jesse Risley

Staff member
Joined
Apr 12, 2006
Messages
2,284
Location
Macomb, IL
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.
 
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 :)
 
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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