2018-05-09 REPORTS: KS/IL/IN/WI

[Quincy Vagell]

Today's chase was a last minute decision with very low confidence. Although it looked like some convection would probably fire over northwestern Kansas, meager boundary layer moisture (dew-points in the mid to upper 40s) and fairly weak mid-level flow suggested that any storms would be loosely/poorly organized. The HRRR even lost convection, for the most part, with mid to late morning model runs, but when it comes to nowcasting, observations trump most model guidance.

After leaving Oklahoma City around 9:30 a.m., I gradually made my way north to I-70, but was not in a rush. As often happens across the High Plains, convection fired relatively early (even in comparison to model progs), by about 20z in far eastern Colorado. A few cells slowly organized just north of Goodland and drifted east-southeast. I got off I-70 near Brewster to take a look.

The storms were clearly outflow dominant, but it was interesting structure that caught my eye. I decided to look for a few places to take photos before calling it a night and getting into position for the expected chase day on Thursday.

Gusty winds kicked up dust and both rain shafts and blowing dust could be seen in the distance, in multiple directions. The storms themselves were not particularly intense, but I did run into some small hail at one point and a few strong wind gusts.

I didn't stay with the storms for long, as they were drifting in the wrong direction and there wouldn't have been much more to see anyway. Considering it was a last minute chase in a marginal setup, that would have otherwise just been a travel day, it was well worth it. Some of my better pictures so far this year came from today and to top it all off, I did not see one chaser at all and very few people, period, once off of I-70. Western Kansas seems almost magical at times and today did not disappoint.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Here in the STL metro, we ended up with a north/south outflow boundary east of I-55 slowly drifting west toward the frontal convection. I drove up to New Douglas, IL where this boundary would encounter the southernmost storm in the line, but the storms fell apart just before sunset. I saw this horseshoe funnel near Highland, IL:

 

[Chris Dickerson]

The slight risk and 2% tornado prob was basically right over my apartment, so it was a local chase for me.

I started near Logansport, IN and went west to get out of the convective debris from the first round of showers. I followed a cell to the north, it went severe-warn d, then fell apart. I went further west to intercept the line, which was showing pockets of weak and broad rotation at times. Several cells were severe warned and showing 1” hail markers on GR, but they too fell apart.

At times, a couple of cells tried to produce small wall clouds, but they didn’t appear to be rotating. I ended up driving home with the squall line right behind me, which provided an excellent lightning show for storms that barely and only briefly crossed the severe threshold.

Normally, I wouldn’t even write this up, but I got a pretty amusing “poseur-graph” out of it all; the storm was trying to produce a scuddy wall cloud off of Rt 41 along the IL border. The scud finger looks like a funnel, and the crepuscular rays behind it look almost like a dust whirl if you simply glance at the photo. Definitely a good candidate for a Skywarn “tornado or not tornado?” slideshow.

But that’s all I got out of this one. Still had a blast, though

 

[Lucas McIntyre]

I didn't even chase storms yesterday. I'm a train enthusiast so I chased a train but after that was done I was treated to a lone thunderstorm quickly approaching Manhattan, KS from the northwest. Immediately after sunset it produced a few lightning strikes, but I wasn't able to photograph any of them, instead, a long exposure during twilight was had of the storm quickly dying out before it got to town.

 

[chrisbray]

I chased since it was super local, and why not take a flyer..plus its been a slow year around here. I was hoping to meet some other local chasers, but most bailed after the first line of storms near the I39 corridor started to fizzle, so this turned into a "structure without friends" day.

I headed out west around 3pm hoping to catch sight of the first group of storms. by I-39. I started watching them just west of Dwight, but the bases were relatively high and flat. Among other mitigating factors, dewpoints were not as high as forecast. I could tell new storms were forming basically overhead, so I headed east with them on the hope that the newer storms would persist into slightly better parameters.

I stopped west of Chebanse, IL as the first real storm bases took hold for the day.
IMG_0390 by chris bray, on Flickr

P5090112 by chris bray, on Flickr

Finally saw some good lightning with this, too. I kept heading east to keep in front of the developing gust fronts, then a bit south to get a better view of an embedded cell west of Martinton, IL, that had an interesting feature on it.
P5090127 by chris bray, on Flickr

Not giving up hope just yet, I continued southeast past Watseka. It was there I saw the first real non-outflow storm base of the day, which unfortunately did not last long before I called the chase due to it lining out.

P5090131 by chris bray, on Flickr

Gotta live with what you can get until a real setup comes along!
(sorry for the fuzzy images, I did not realize until afterwards that my ISO was set way high)