2015-6-10 REPORTS: IL

[chrisbray]

Took a flier on a 0% Tornado Slight Risk day. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it wasn't anything special but I thoroughly enjoyed myself, getting some daytime, dusk and nighttime storm pictures.

I started out about 6:30 pm heading out towards the storm developing over the Joliet area, and made it to a great location perhaps 5 miles south of Manhattan, IL where I could see the storm and it's neighbor storms developing. Not long after I got there, the storm started developing low level features. I am pretty sure this was a wall cloud.
P6104457 by chris bray, on Flickr
P6104462 by chris bray, on Flickr

My location relative to the storm on radar
IMG_0349[1] by chris bray, on Flickr

I wish I had started this sooner, but here is a timelapse of the storm after I noticed the developing wall cloud. I am really sorry about the shakiness, I was using my Iphone for a timelapse for the first time and I did not have a mount, it was just placed gently on the rack on top of the truck so anytime the wind blew, it shook a little bit! But you can see the wall cloud get moved by the developing gust front and absorbed by it eventually.
IMG_0351[1] by chris bray, on Flickr

Not long after, the storm really lined out and I fled west to avoid the approaching gust front. I ended up just West of Coal City to see if the western edge of storm complex could get anything going on its own. It couldn't, but even as the system weakened it had a great view all around. Pano:
IMG_0355[1] by chris bray, on Flickr

After it died down, I was really tempted to bail southwest to this massive line of storms parked over the Peoria area, but as I decided to do so I noticed new storms kept popping in the area. They weren't even close to sever, but as dusk approached I figured it would be easy enough to just stay within a half hour or so from my home base and shoot lightning pictures on any storm that managed to survive.

Dusk:
P6104494 by chris bray, on Flickr

After nearly getting stuck on a dirt road (not again!) when I repositioned east to try for lightning pictures, I was about to call it a night when the last storm of the night for our area popped up to my north. I found a good field turn off just northwest of Momence, IL and parked myself on the edge of a muddy cornfield for some lightning shots:
P6104511 by chris bray, on Flickr
P6104514 by chris bray, on Flickr
P6104515 by chris bray, on Flickr
P6104516 by chris bray, on Flickr

Headed home after that last shot, as it was the last bolt of the night. Made it there by 11:30. Not bad for 5 hours of local chasing!

 

[chrisbray]

Not sure why but you have to click on the picture of my timelapse to view it, it will open in a separate window on Flickr.

 

[chrisbray]

Uploaded timelapse to youtube and reduced shakiness!

 

[Billy Faletti]

Really didn't think it would be such a cool day, but I guess extreme instability environments can do some great things even with a lack of shear.

Watched some cumulus towers go up right outside of my house (northern Putnam County) and rapidly explode into a raging thunderstorm. It immediately put down severe hail near Hennepin once precip began to fall from the tower.

Decided to head south a bit and get into the VIL maximum. Was a bit of a challenge due to the storm backbuilding a bit but was able to find a little hail.


We headed south toward McNabb a noticed a huge increase in CGs, many VERY close to our vehicle. At the same time, a maxed out VIL hail core popped up to our west, which we headed into. Here we found some big hail, many hailstones around 2" in diameter. Thought we were going to see some cracks in our windshield but thankfully we only got some dents.


The hail core disappeared as the storm merged with another storm to the south, but the southern storm began to exhibit some supercell characteristics on radar. It went tornado warned as we raced south through Marshall County. We finally got a visual on the wall cloud west of Washburn in northern Woodford County. Tornado sirens were wailing as this photo was taken:

That wall cloud eventually fizzled and another meso formed SW of the old one but didn't get as strong as the previous one. There was some great supercell structure, though, so we decided to stay. A wall cloud did form and there was some broad rotation and some very noticeable rising motion, but of course it couldn't even come close to getting the job done.


Headed back home afterwards with a pretty incredible mammatus display at sunset but it was almost completely obscured by low clouds. Was able to grab this photo at dusk (photo quality is degraded due to copying/pasting from my Facebook post):


My camera died before the real great lightning show started after dark, but I was able to get a few shots like this near dusk:

The anvil crawler display was incredible until about 1 or 2 AM even though the storms departed around 7 PM. Don't think I've seen such a beautiful display from my house before.

Also, here's some cell phone video I shot of the wall cloud and supercell structure near Washburn: