5/29/2009 Reports: Illinois

[Andrew Pritchard]

Saw a healthy storm developing from home, and decided to go after it winding up with a healthy little minisupercell that exhibited beautiful structure for a while before sunset. Will have some video and more photos up soon, but figured I'd share a photo before bed.

Southern Champaign County IL around 7:30 PM CDT.

 

[Paul Hadfield]

Like Andrew, I didn't have to go far to enjoy the show from next door in Macon County. When the sunset light was at peak, I was at an unfortunate loss for having left the SLR battery at home on the charger. It still worked out somewhat being as I had my little digicam. I was able to eventually swing back and get the battery so to spend time with the lightning after dark. The most significant catch however, was the following aircraft that I am at a loss to properly identify. More on my BLOG.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Got a time lapse up of the minisup in Champaign County. Can't say it's any more interesting than the still images, but here it is no less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xucMqLUv6yE

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Not from IL, but rather western IA late last night...actually more this morning than anything. I always try to label things after midnight from the day before, so I guess posting it here works well enough.

Sigh, was sooo close to getting a sick shot of CGs infront of the low moon. Base was right above me, so any CGs would have been close too. Why oh why couldn't these produce a couple CGs.

Very bright one overhead lights up the foreground like day.

Rather cool after they moved by and the stars shown brightly. Air was pretty crisp to get the stars to be as bright as they were, this close to Omaha(which is helping color/light up those clouds on the longer 400 ISO exposures).

Acount and a couple others here: http://www.extremeinstability.com/09-5-29.htm

 

[Darren Addy]

Backyard "chase"... a few storms were passing from Custer County into northern Buffalo county and so, with the sun on its way to setting, I opted to get as far west as I could to get the setting sunlight on the western side of the storm.

There was a persistent lowering that appeared, but it had no discernable rotation and was eventually blown apart by some moderate RFD:

Tried to manually catch some lightning zots and got a decent double strike:

As the sun set and painted pink on some features, this vertical shaft of pink caught my eye. Not sure if it is a strong rain shaft or just some scud?

The backside of the passing storm was quite beautiful in the fading light:

Nothing to write home about, but much more enjoyable than staying home and doing yard work.