5/16/07 DISC: IL / WI

[Skip Talbot]

I thought some of you might find this interesting:

We had a cold air event yesterday that spawned clusters of thunderstorms. This storm was one of the stronger ones that came out of Wisconsin and appeared to develop a hook echo over the northern suburbs. I dismissed it as coincidence at first, thinking it was just a smaller cell on the southern flank. The feature persisted, however, and then registered a meso marker as well. It appears that this severe storm was able to go supercellular once it hit the lake breeze boundary. Notice the 180 degree shift in the wind readings from the surface stations. The storm produced a few damaging straight line wind reports including downed power poles.

 

[Tony Lyza]

That happened on a much more severe scale from the city to the south suburbs/NW IN with a cell that hit the lake boundary on 7/17/03 and resulted in this:

Please note that the direction arrow should be SSE, not ESE. I just can't draw. I was sitting in a van in my driveway when the tennis-ball-sized hail and 90-100MPH hit.
http://s67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/tornadotony/?action=view&current=717stormanalysis.jpg

 

[David Draun]

That storm blasted through Schaumburg yesterday evening. There was a really dark shelf cloud. It didn't look like much at first. I remember seeing that brief hook on the storm as it passed through my area on the news last night. I didn't see a wall cloud or meso though. Witnesses about a couple miles to my south on Wise road saw swirling debris at the time of the radar image. Right now it's going down as straight-line wind damage though. It would be cool if it was upgraded to an EF-0 or something seeing as Schaumburg hasn't had a touchdown in a long time!

Wow, look at the inflow wind barbs on the radar image!