2015-04-09 REPORTS: IA/IL/MO/AR/MI/WI

[Austin Jones]

Chased a severe storm from about Keytesville MO to Macon MO, Observed several lowering's but no rotation. Was forced to start heading home for dinner arrangements with family at 4 , as I went south back home on 63 I literally had to turn east and away from the storm over Centralia MO with a view of the base as it went tornado warned.
First two pictures SW of Macon:
Last picture N of Keytesville:

Fun local day though

 

[Austin Jones]

Edit:turned west, not east off of 63

 

[Dan Robinson]

I knew the warm front was going to be the place to be today, but when there is also a threat for tornadic supercells at home, it's hard for me to get motivated to stray too far. Call it location bias (which it probably is now), but it's a result of being burned many times by leaving home and having tornadoes pass 20 miles from my apartment. I didn't leave home until 3PM, and was able to make a leisurely drive up to Jerseyville, IL to catch my first storm of the day. As it approached, the original meso became engulfed by a new core developing just to its south. This pretty well hosed the storm until it was right on top of me, at which time the new updraft became dominant and a strong rain-filled RFD surge blasted across the road, snapping many small tree limbs and severely bending others. I had no hope of catching up again as the visibility was near zero, and I feared that there could be fallen tree limbs in the road I could not see in time. Once out of the precip, I dropped down to I-70 and briefly attempted a catch-up move paralleling the storm to the south, but quickly abandoned that idea once darkness fell. I estimated I'd have had to go to Effingham to get back in position, and the instability was starting to drop off that far east anyway. I ended the day by standing out in the post-frontal winds a mile from home and doing some lightning photography of the departing storms to the east.


Click for larger version

 

[Nick L]

I apologize if my post isn't of the desired quality, its my first time.

I also haven't watched my video yet, so I may be missing some details.
I left work around 2:00 and headed south out of Madison, aiming to sit in the warm sector and wait for some discrete cells to fire up. Eventually, I was sitting to the north of Peru, IL when I saw two newly formed cells south of Sterling, and decided that would be my play. This ended up being a very good decision as the cells would eventually merge and produce the large tornado that affected Rochelle, Fairdale and others. I raced my way north and west on US 52 and met the storm north of Amboy just as it became tornado warned. I watched the tornado develop very close to me near I-88, but I wasn't able to keep up with it very well after that. This was due to a number of factors: inexperience, being alone and trying to manage everything, the forward speed of the storm. I raced to try to keep up with the tornado as it grew and was able to at least keep it in sight most of the way until I neared I-39 north of Rochelle. After that, it started to get pretty far ahead of me, but I kept following it until around Kirkland. I also lost my radar feed around 7:20, which was not helpful. I then ended the chase and after a few attempts, managed to make my way back to I-39 to head back home. This was my first time seeing significant tornado damage, and it was pretty awful. I stopped a couple times to see if anybody wanted help, but I wasn't needed.

Considering this was my first time chasing in five years and really only my second time ever, I would say it was pretty successful.

 

[Adam Lucio]

After much fighting I managed to get myself into the cage and tango with a weak multi vortex near Clinton, IA. I was happy and all smiles, then I panned my radar over to the east and saw what was happening in Illinois and all my good feelings went out the window. What an incredible storm on a difficult forecast day.

 

[Mike Marz]

After a nice drive from the middle of Kansas from the previous days Oklahoma dryline debacle, I arrived in south central Iowa right at initiation time.

I continued east and stayed with this storm for awhile and then it began to appear quite messy on radar

So I decided to head south towards a more isolated cell

That began to look interesting

and eventually had a nice RFD cut come surging in

but shortly after that it died... and then the unorganized cell that I decided to leave a few hours prior, well it looked like this...

and that is that. I really hope no one up there was killed by that monster tornado, I am just getting home and haven't heard much. Needles to say, damage aside, what a gorgeous tornado that was. Just starting to see videos of it... WOW. Just makes me more hungry for the next chase.

 

[kevin-palmer]

Today was a crazy and overall frustrating day. I was on 3 storms that produced tornadoes but I have nothing to show for it. I left home just before noon and found myself in Brimfield as one of the first storms of the day quickly fired. Initially it looked like it was trying to rotate but after that it looked unimpressive. I got some hail as it passed over and I thought it was an easy choice to let the storm go and continue driving northwest. I didn't think the atmosphere wasn't ready to support a tornado yet. But less than 20 minutes later it dropped a tornado in Chillicothe. Even at that time it did not look impressive on the radar. But I continued to my target of Burlington, Iowa. I spent awhile trying to decide if I should stay in Iowa or get back in Illinois. There is a long stretch of the Mississippi River without a bridge and I didn't want to get cut off by a storm. Eventually I committed to a strong thunderstorm heading towards Muscatine. As I was driving it went tornado warned but it sounds like nothing came of that. As I got closer more storms started popping up which hurt the visibility. Finally I pushed through the precip and watched a shelf cloud emerge out of the rain. As it passed by it looked like it was trying to turn into a wall cloud and it soon went tornado warned again. I tried to follow but I couldn't catch up with the 50 mph storm. This is the same tornado that approached Clinton, I don't know how long it was on the ground. I watched on the radar as it turned into an HP mess when I noticed another cell forming to my southeast. It was showing rotation but once again I was having problems catching up with the fast moving storm. In the distance I could see a wall cloud and just make out a tornado below it, which was likely a wedge at that point. I stopped in Ashton, where the tornado had passed north minutes earlier and it continued on to Rochelle. Trying to get one last picture of a storm I unintentionally came upon a damage path on an extremely muddy road where I was worried I would get stuck. Fiberglass insulation was strewn on the fields and it looked like a house up ahead had significant damage. But there were already people up there helping and the road was being blocked off so I finally started heading home. I wish the storms had been a little slower and of course it was sad that some towns got hit.

Here's the storm west of Muscatine shortly before it ramped up and dropped a tornado. (This was your storm @Adam Lucio)

 

[Winston Wells]

Couldn't get out of work in west-central Illinois until just after 5 p.m., so I decided to target two SVR-warned cells that had fired along the cold front and were moving out of eastern Missouri into Illinois:



The southern cell near Jerseyville, IL eventually gained a tornado warning, but I stayed with the northern cell and chased it from near White Hall to Girard before letting it go. It was a mess most of the time, but it did produce a series of wall clouds as it periodically attempted to organize. The following shot looks west from just south of White Hall from U.S. 67:




Another wall cloud appeared a few minutes later between Carrollton and Greenfield. This shot looks northwest from IL-108 between the two communities:



Here's the core of the storm as it passed in front of me on IL-267 just north of Greenfield. The view is to the north:



The storm appeared to struggle for much of the time that I followed it. Mergers, undercutting, and southwesterly surface flow certainly didn't help things.

 

[chrisbray]

We chased Illinois today and it was a joke. Literally every storm we went to died, until the last one of the day took of at 70 miles an hour away from us and then went tornado warned. I almost feel like there were TOO MANY options.

We did intercept that early tornado warned storm in IL in Peoria County at about 2, seeing very nice series of wall clouds on approach but as soon as we got next to it, it was clearly dying. Theme of the day.

At that point we hopped back on I39 to head to I80 again and over to Iowa, but we noticed storms popping up along I80...so we kept going north on I39 to try and intercept them near I88. But they never really strengthened and we didn't want to go too far north towards Wisconsin, so we opted to head in I88 towards Iowa once again to intercept the Iowa storms. But...once again saw new storms popping up near the Quad Cities. We decided to sit on those. They died. We had to decide to try and intercept the tornado warned storm just on the Iowa Side of the Quad Cities or to go south towards new storms forming in IL. Quad cities storm was very messy and rain wrapped, plus we had concerns about chasing near an urban area and dealing with river crossings...so we went south and sat on the new storms forming AGAIN.

I'm not sure what caused the storms south of I-80 to ALL die when the entered Illinois. We sat right at the beginning of the two cells that eventually become the Rochester tornado, but wasn't sure we could keep up with them moving northeast plus they looked weak. ALL of the Mesoanalysis parameters painted the area along and south of I80 in Illinois has having the most favorable environment for supercells so naturally we decided to try and intercept a discrete supercell moving across the Mississippi River into Illinois near Quincy and as soon as we made that decision, it died. So we opted for the next cell just to the south. It died. Finally a new one popped up around 6pm near Farmington and strengthened, but we didn't realize it would be moving at 70 mph. I am not sure we even could have kept up with it if we tried. At that point we knew were we screwed with dusk approaching so we just found I55 back to Joliet and followed behind that line of storms all the way.

Very, very disappointing, after 10 year my partner has never seen a tornado and I am still stuck on one. We find a new way to fail every time out.

 

[Drue Bernardi]

Today wasn't a complete bust, but it wasn't a victory. Drove up to El Paso, IL (with a few stops in between) and linked up with some other chasers. We tried to chase some of the later afternoon storms near Peoria but as Chris mentioned above they all died a slow death. Had one just south of Peoria with some rotation and hail and ended up going just east of the core as it passed us, then it died off. Everything else that formed around us seemed to be just about useless and was too weak to even produce much lightning. Finally we got one last Hail Mary storm and chased it east of Peoria into the Farmington area where it tried its hardest to produce a tornado. Got a few good shots of the wall cloud and there was quite a bit of rotation. The storm was eventually tornado warned but by that time it was a torrential rainy mess. If there was a tornado it was wrapped in rain and with night fast approaching I called it off and started my drive back home. Got an amazing lightning show on the way home and actually had a few tornado warnings down south of me, but other than that there wasn't much to mention.

 

[Ethan Schisler]

I have similar stories to most everyone else on this thread for yesterday. I started out my day in the Cameron, MO area after a long drive from Western OK the previous day (humiliating bust). I was targeting the triple point in Eastern IA/Western IL. We drove into Southeast Iowa and watched the initial Davenport, IA storm go up into a mess real fast, decided to drop south off that and catch another storm coming towards the Fort Madison, IA area. This storm was LP and quickly met its demise per crossing into Western IL. This was essentially the end of our chase. I was bummed at another bust, however as many have seen, another hour later and things really went crazy to the north. Hard saying if I ever would have made it to the Rochelle storm or not, regardless I'll be re-evaluating how I chase these "close-to-home" tornado days in the future. They always seem to skunk me.

 

[chrisbray]

Today wasn't a complete bust, but it wasn't a victory. Drove up to El Paso, IL (with a few stops in between) and linked up with some other chasers. We tried to chase some of the later afternoon storms near Peoria but as Chris mentioned above they all died a slow death. Had one just south of Peoria with some rotation and hail and ended up going just east of the core as it passed us, then it died off. Everything else that formed around us seemed to be just about useless and was too weak to even produce much lightning. Finally we got one last Hail Mary storm and chased it east of Peoria into the Farmington area where it tried its hardest to produce a tornado. Got a few good shots of the wall cloud and there was quite a bit of rotation. The storm was eventually tornado warned but by that time it was a torrential rainy mess. If there was a tornado it was wrapped in rain and with night fast approaching I called it off and started my drive back home. Got an amazing lightning show on the way home and actually had a few tornado warnings down south of me, but other than that there wasn't much to mention.

Drue, we were on that storm from the beginning. It strengthened VERY fast and we had to bail right at Farmington due to lots of hail, and then it started moving at near 70 MPH. We watched helplessly as it strengthened and could see the massive wall cloud and base from a long ways away. We had no chance of catching it

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Very frustrating day. We intercepted the cell of the day (at that time) just east of Albia, IA. It tried to organize several times but never could get quite wrapped up. Seeing the 3+" hail markers, we decided not to punch the core and stair step it NE. That was our first mistake as we had horrible road options, and the best option we had was shut down. The storm looked like garbage the entire 3+ hours we were on it, so once it neared the Quad Cities, we called off the chase. The rest is history. Never again will I bail on an Illinois warm front.

 

[Billy Faletti]

The first storm that got us out the door was the tornado warned storm in Peoria County. As soon as we got very close to it, it died. We then started going back north for the cells popping east of the Quad Cities. Looked like they could have become full-fledged supercells for awhile, but of course they became messy too.

We went back home since we live very closeby to wait and see if anything would become substantial. We watched as a cell went up in Bureau County moving up towards Rochelle. I decided not to go after it because a) I didn't think we could make it (which we could've now that I look back), and b) there were cells coming from the southwest. So I decide we should wait at home in favor of the cells to the SW. Not my finest moment. Only a little while later we were watching live coverage on TWC of a wedge tornado 45 minutes away. I won't go into any more detail as we all probably know that feeling.

I noticed that the cell over Marshall and Peoria Counties was rotating, and it went tornado warned as we approached it. This photo is from the cell just north of the tornado warned one:

We ran into some quarter sized hail as we core punched north of Varna and gained a visual of it. Very menacing HP supercell structure. Saw wall cloud with rapid rising motion on the north side of the very wet RFD. Here's a frame grab from video:

This is a day that I'll be trying to get off my mind for a long time. Missing an extremely photogenic wedge 45 minutes from home. Ouch.

 

[Michael Gavan]

More or less just subscribing to this thread with this post, but followed a Supercell from west of Chillicothe, IA to Davenport, IA. There were multitudes of updraft mergers and the overall supercell mode was high end HP and it looked from the beginning as though it would gust out. It finally began to shed itself and outflow / shelf cloud was visible on the southern end, while the main updraft turned in on itself and produce some sort of nasty QLCS type rain wrapped tornado north of Davenport. No visibility and no possible chance that the storm would turn itself into a mode worth giving more attention. Once east of the MS river, headed south to catch up to either of two cells immediately to the south that were discrete with well over 3 hours of daylight remaining, had good updrafts on radar etc. While en route I noticed them getting smaller, I had plenty of time to go over surface obs and immedately began to worry about the health of these cells. 57-59 degree dews ahead of the cells were noted, while just pockets of mid-60's were noted where earlier storms had been and re-evaported (like Peoria) The other concern was the approaching front which may cut off the storms. While en route for approx 20 minutes, we watched both storms fail miserably. Abandoning the chase, we headed back to I 80, only to find that we were approx 1 hour out of position to see the Rochelle Tornado.

Just curious, anyone actually stick with that same cell and actually scored the Rochelle Tornado? I feel like had we stuck with that boundary we would have been in the Wisconsin jungles on grungy cells. I'm not sure if I had 10 more opportunities like this if I'd change my call. However, had we abandoned all storms, and started heading home----we would have been minutes away from the developing cell that produced.

I woke up to more gray hair that I didn't notice yesterday.