2/16/05 REPORTS: MO/IL/ARK

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin and I are exhausted from a chase in central missouri around Rolla area. Witnessed some excellent February convection!

Pictures here: http://www.stormchasers.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=520

More tomorrow....

 

[Kurt Hulst]

I wasn’t to sure about chasing yesterday morning when I got up at 7am. but packed the car up and headed to Champaign IL. Where I found I was in an area for and MD which turned into a tornado watch. I new I needed to head to Springfield. I didn’t want to go all the way Springfield because there was already convection. With Storm motion of upwards to 50mph. Well needless to say I still wound up momentarily behind the leading line. I hit 104 south of Springfield and headed east toward Taylorville. It was very hard to get ahead of this line. Just north of Taylorville I found a route that bypassed the town and the line caught up with me again. I would estimate wind speeds of 60-65 mph. Defiantly had me on my toes with my butt puckered as 100ft telephone poles to the right were swaying like crazy. But I found my route to my south east on 29. Andrew Khan had called me and told me there was a TVS and some meso rings on the Cell I was after. And then It was tornado warned. First tornado warning of 2006. I was about 10 miles or less north of Puna when I was coming out of the whales mouth.

Not a great picture but its the only one I got.

I was able to get out ahead of it and when I looked up to my north I saw this

Nice Striations.
And here’s the rest of the pics

Looked like a Wet RFD cut. As you can see the inflow band from the south east.

Shortly after this picture it was completely wrapped in rain and no longer visible. But I should of stayed with that Cell as it was the only one with a tornado reported near Atwood. Glen mentioned he didn’t see any sign of a tornado. And im sure it was very hard to actually see one With so much rain.

I headed south for the tornado warned cells coming out of STL after the initial cell I was on didn’t look visually appealing. Those storms pretty much died but I was able to capture a weakening wall cloud and a bit of structure as I was driving east on I-70.

I was able to get a few lightning pics west of Marshall IL.

Then I came home to an ice storm and here’s a few pics I woke up to this morning