2018-06-26 Reports: IL/KS/MO/WI

[Devin Pitts]

So I started this day out with very muted expectations given the morning convection in place, but luckily central through northern IL managed to clear out somewhat allowing for some recovery time. I made my way up towards La Salle/Peru along I-39 to try to catch up to the ongoing storms at about 3pm and eventually caught up with a very low topped supercell that managed to produce at least one funnel through its many cycles. I followed this cell to the northeast where it eventually it organized into a more traditional supercell as it crossed the warm front just south of DeKalb that was draped across the area in a NW-SE orientation and managed to pick up some decent low level rotation, but ultimately fell apart once it left the warm front.

After this storm, I saw a group of cells to my south near Franks that appeared to be a left split/right split pair making their way towards the warm front. I got on the right split as it was passing Hinckley at about 5:10pm and watched it organize very quickly as it crossed the warm front with a very rapidly rotating wall cloud just northeast of Hinckley(apologies for the focus, camera somehow turned auto-focus somehow):

Thankfully the storm motion was quite slow, which combined with the amazing road network of Northern IL allowed me to get quite close to the wall cloud. Eventually a funnel descended and made it about 2/3rds the way to the ground.

Now initially, I did not consider this a tornado as I didn't see any obvious ground circulation and was much more focused on the funnel churning just overhead. After reviewing my dashcam video I noticed small suction vorticies dancing in the field 250 yards from my position directly under the funnel!

Thanks to this I was able to make a delayed tornado report to NWS LOT to get it confirmed as a tornado.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I didn't feel like taking another full day off of work to go up to northern Illinois, so initially planned to play the outflow boundary to the south of St. Louis around Sparta/Chester. As the afternoon wore on, the boundary kept sinking farther south, putting storms into the less favorable terrain near and south of Carbondale. I ended up staying in STL for three rounds of sub-severe storms.

Some upward tower lightning from round 3:

And this storm over downtown from round 1:



Larger:
http://stormhighway.com/stlouisphotos/storms_weather/thunderstorms/riverfront-arch-storm-h-1772p.php

 

[Ethan Schisler]

I "chased" yesterday evening along the I-80 corridor in Illinois. I initially wasn't going to chase because I thought the morning MCS had pretty much trashed the environment....AND I had a lot of homework to do as I recently took about 8 credit hours during the summer-time (more work than I anticipated lol).

Anyway....we had some sunshine during the early to late afternoon hours which helped boost CAPE values up to around 1500 J/KG. So I figured with the modest amounts of low level shear in place, we might be in business for some interesting weather. I saw a brief tornado last Thursday near home with less than ideal parameters, so I might as well go out I thought. I got all my homework done around 4:30PM and grabbed some food and went northward. I caught up to a cluster of storms around 6PM crossing the Mississippi River in Mercer County. The lead cell near Viola, IL was of interest to me. I noticed your traditional parameters you'd look at for supercell tornadoes were quite low....however the 0-3km CAPE and surface vorticity were pegging quite high over the northern 1/3 of Illinois around 7pm yesterday evening. I use this parameter a lot when chasing, so I was quite excited at the potential for a quick spin up or two. I got on the storm N of Viola right around 7pm and initially noticed a wall cloud and then a funnel quickly developed. I was about 3 miles southeast of the storm and due to the high moisture in the air, I had low visibility....however one of my good friends and chase partner, Cory Marshall was up the road and caught a great photo of it here (with his permission, mods delete if I'm not able to do this, but my shot of it isn't very good).

[url=https://flic.kr/p/28ACkKr]Viola, IL funnel by Ethan Schisler, on Flickr[/URL]


Not sure if it touched down, from my vantage point it didn't and from the video he showed me (he was a few miles closer), it didn't either so we will leave it at that....but I've seen less touch down, so its definitely in that inconclusive category....but I don't believe that it did .

The storm had great storm structure as well for a short while and eventually I caught up to it and it tried to form a wall cloud north of the small town of Windsor, IL in Mercer County and had decent rotation before it eventually got absorbed into the line to the west. I eventually dropped south after noting a couple other areas of rotation along this line north of Galesburg. I caught a great time-lapse of the complex further south after sunset.

Overall, I wish I had taken more time to assess the potential further northeast this day to catch the tornadoes in Northeast Illinois....but I had a lot of homework to do and honestly didn't think things would really recover after the morning complex of storms....and honestly the 00z DVN sounding wasn't that impressive either, so I'm surprised the storms southeast of DVN did what they did...one of them even garnered a Tornado Warning.

Here is my footage:

 

[CGardner]

I played the SE Kansas storms. I would have posted earlier, but due to circumstances with my phone. I didn't think it would be worthy; however, I have decided based on what happened. It needed to be posted.

After an initial MCS passed through around 3. I got off work at five and buzzed North to Iola, KS. The structure wasn't there, and I deeply apologize for these pics. I dropped my phone onto pavement and it jacked the camera up.

So, then I decide to play the cell heading towards Eureka. I got this before it dropped the EF3 on the center of town, and my phone's camera went dead.

I started up the road to help, but cop stops me and just tells me to turn around. I explain I'm first responder trained and it fell onto deaf ears. I go home.....dissappointed. Dissappointed at my phone and that cop. Thankfully, only minor injuries.