2017-06-17 REPORTS: IL/MO/IA

[Ethan Schisler]

Had been watching this day for a while for a local chase. Had intentions of chasing the day before, but given what happened last weekend (major health issues), I didn't feel safe venturing far from home, so I stuck to a local chase. It didn't turn out too bad. I targeted a supercell that was crossing the Mississippi River near Muscatine, Iowa into Mercer County, IL. I eventually got on the storm near Viola, IL and documented a weak, short lived tornado just northwest of the small town of Alpha, IL around 6:40PM this evening. I noobed it up with the camera though while driving and forgot to change my settings, so the first picture is blurry and the best picture I got was while it was lifting. I didn't see anymore tornadoes from this storm, only one attempt at tightening up as it was north of Victoria, IL. I dropped south to some more storms in the Galesburg area, but they were pretty insignificant, I got a nice sunset though on the back-side of the last storm near St Augustine, IL. Overall not a bad chase day. The tornado was pretty weak and probably among the weakest I've seen, but still nonetheless...I was happy to be there to see it. I submitted my report to NWS Quad Cities, however never saw the report come up on SPC.

Here are a few shots from the day....


Bad photo while driving


Best photo I got after I pulled over, the tornado was in the process of lifting. Total run time....around 30 seconds maybe, not very long...

Pretty sunset on the backside of the storms.

Not an incredible day by any means, but any day I can get out and see some good storms close to home is okay in my book.

 

[David Williams]

My chase partners and I targeted south central KS for storms firing near the stationary boundary. A storm fired northwest of Pratt late in the afternoon. It took a bit for the storm to organize. As it ingested the cells around it and interacted with the boaundary. As we postioned ourselves north of Haviland, the lightning and structure started to steadily improve.



After a time, the lead cell became disorganized and a cell to the rear along the boundary became more dominant. We repositioned closer to the base of the rear cell, and in a matter of 5 minutes on our drive from Haviland to 10 miles east of Greensburg the structure became extraordinarily sculpted.



It's amazing what can happen in just 5 minutes to a maturing supercell. In another 5 minutes, we were treated to a tightening meso and more beautiful structure while the cell slowly tracked south over Greensburg.



A wonderful chase to end the season.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Stormtrack mobile app

 

[James Wilson]

Admin please add KS to the title.

I targeted the same area as most people that chased Kansas so around Junction City and SE. I met up with Jane ONeill and Clyve Herbert and waited for storms to fire. We got on the cell South of Junction City and followed it for the day. It began with large hail and tried very hard to drop something with multiple funnels. I was surprised it was not tornado warned at any time especially with wall cloud and funnel reports coming in. We saw a brief touch down NW of White City Kansas and I got the below lightning shot from my new AX100 camcorder. On the way home I helped someone that hit the concrete wall along I-70 luckily he was ok. I then met up with Bart, Tom and Ben at my house so they could take my sofas. Decent chase and typical 2017 bird fart. Note I was with the Australians so I posted a couple photos they took as I just watched.