3/30/05 Reports: IA, IL

[Carla Bisby]

What a nice way to kickoff my 2005 chase season. I was unable to get to the Peoria area in time to track the tornadic storms there but I was able to leave work a bit early and saw some great T-warned storms near Springfield. One cell had an unimpressive wall cloud but other than that no Tor action near where I was. I saw the most beautiful cell I’ve ever seen south of Springfield around 6:30 when all the “clutter†cleared away. It was perfect and awesome. It was VERY low-based with a nice anvil and as the sun was setting half of it lit up in shades of pink. Unfortunately I was unable to take more than one early shot of it (mostly shrouded in clutter) since I had run out of film a few minutes beforehand. Great – the most beautiful storm I’ve seen and I had no way to record it. After kicking myself for 5 minutes for not remembering to bring extra film I did what I’ve never done on a chase yet – I simply watched the storm as it passed by me and enjoyed it. Great light show with a lot of sheet lightning and many CGs including a set of “double†CGs that ran parallel to each other in their path to the ground. Once it was dark I headed back to STL and enjoyed the continuing light show on the way home. I would give this chase a 10 on a scale of 1-10 since that cell near Spfd was so magnificent that even if that had been the only cell I saw it would have been worth the trip. A few general cloud and sunset pics was all I was able to get:


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