5/30/08 DISC: IL/IN

[Jim Zandonai]

Well this has been an interesting day here..and looks like Central IL is getting hit hard now too..and we'll have reports from there soon..
This a.m a MCS moves over the area of N.IL with mostly heavy rain. No severe weather was reported here..However after this area moved by strong southerly winds behind this whole system blew over the region into NE IL.. The RFD airport recorded a 63mph non thunderstorm wind gust. Numerous trees were down and uprooted. The silly thing is I was inside a building working and didn't have a clue what was going on outside as the storms had past by so I figured it was over..I did get a couple pics of some tree damage so here's one.. Nothing like being taken by surprise but these things are apparently very tough to predict until they occur..

 

[John Gnuechtel]

Was trying out the new camcorder locally today. Did a bunch of test shooting as the first round of storms made their way through the my neighborhood in Urbana. Got one very interesting frame of myself walking down from my neighbors' upstairs patio where I was seeing if I could get a better shooting position. Not exactly the most comfortable moment:

 

[Daniel Christianson]

MODS please move this picture to the right spot if it doesnt belong here. Wasnt planning on anything, just out delivering some thing to customers when i spotted this little guy to the West of Blair NE. There was a little cloud to cloud lightning going on but not much, i shot video with the digi cam for 16min so hopefully the timelapse comes out nice.

Great little suprise, and beautfiul sunset.

 

[Joel Wright]

Already put this picture in the reports thread, but perhaps I should have just put it here. This is sort of a "is this a tornado" post. Obviously you can only tell so much by a still picture, but what do you guys think of this photo? It sure looks like something to me. My perspective might be slightly skewed though, since any person who takes a photo like this is certainly hoping that what they shot was legit.

What do you guys think? Anything in the photo that convinces you of something either way?

A tornado was reported just west of this location right around the time this picture was taken. If it wasn't for that I'd probably be a bit more skeptical.

 

[rdale]

I suppose it could... But I can certainly see how a tornado would be reported. What did the damage survey say in that area?

 

[Danny Neal]

Already put this picture in the reports thread, but perhaps I should have just put it here. This is sort of a "is this a tornado" post. Obviously you can only tell so much by a still picture, but what do you guys think of this photo? It sure looks like something to me. My perspective might be slightly skewed though, since any person who takes a photo like this is certainly hoping that what they shot was legit.

What do you guys think? Anything in the photo that convinces you of something either way?

A tornado was reported just west of this location right around the time this picture was taken. If it wasn't for that I'd probably be a bit more skeptical.

Hey Joel, what is your exact location?? We were in Pawnee at about 740 PM. Saw the exact same photo as you (not contrast enhanced) Apparently there was a tornado 5 miles to the west of Pawnee, but there was nothing but an HP mess. My video is fairly inconclusive. Were you in Auburn?

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Hey Joel, what is your exact location?? We were in Pawnee at about 740 PM. Saw the exact same photo as you (not contrast enhanced) Apparently there was a tornado 5 miles to the west of Pawnee, but there was nothing but an HP mess. My video is fairly inconclusive. Were you in Auburn?

Hey Danny,

Yeah, we were in Auburn, where the apparent stovepipe was reported. Reviewing video and my photos again, we are almost certain that, if there was indeed a tornado, then this would have to be it. I wish we would have had a better visual. We did notice that interesting feature while we were there, but since it was semi-rain wrapped, we really couldn't tell until contrasting the photos. I haven't heard of the Pawnee report.

 

[Danny Neal]

Hey Danny,

Yeah, we were in Auburn, where the apparent stovepipe was reported. Reviewing video and my photos again, we are almost certain that, if there was indeed a tornado, then this would have to be it. I wish we would have had a better visual. We did notice that interesting feature while we were there, but since it was semi-rain wrapped, we really couldn't tell until contrasting the photos. I haven't heard of the Pawnee report.

Allegedly**** there was a tornado 5 miles west of Pawnee. Based on radar and velocities that we had.....I would probably say it was the occluding rotation from the previous tornado. I think Pawnee and Auburn are 7 or 8 miles apart. I have to agree that what you showed does look interesting indeed. In our video we have an interesting feature to our south west that looks like what Skip photographed (that general area above the actual tornado) But to see below the cloud base into that messy was near impossible. Our video was at 741 PM and this report

0734 PM HAIL PAWNEE 39.59N 89.58W
05/30/2008 E1.75 INCH SANGAMON IL FIRE DEPT/RESCUE

was entered at 734......sooooo that was probably not accurate....I would assume 754 maybe. We got semi-cored at 8 PM or so about 5 SE of Pawnee probably 50+ mph winds and a lot of blowing tree debris. We had an interesting spin up just south of the road by about 1/4 of a mile that last maybe 30 seconds, most likely a gustnado. Other than that it seemed like it lined out. I guess that wrong turn in Taylorville cost us the Waverly tornado. Spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get back on the road we needed to be on.

 

[Joel Wright]

Hey Danny, we were actually a touch east-southeast of Auburn. We could see Auburn just to the west as the storm approached. So I guess that would make us about 4 or 5 miles west of Pawnee.

Here is a photo taken a bit earlier than the one above. Not sure on the exact time on this one. I'm guessing a few minutes prior to the above. Again it's been contrasted to enhance shadows etc. Yet again nothing conclusive, but the interesting feature is certainly visible. Especially when standing a bit back from the computer monitor.

 

[Danny Neal]

Indeed. The official report places the ending point 8 miles WSW of Auburn. Do YOU think you could have picked that up from 10 miles away? Your images posted above, certainly the first one, gives you a strong case.

Unrelated but equally perplexing.....Myself, Adam Lucio, and Matt Fischer were in Springfield at I 72 and Rt 4 on the southwest side, looking toward the NW at the hook moving into Springfield. http://youtube.com/watch?v=7d9nyMVwqCc What do you all think?

 

[Tony Lyza]

Already put this picture in the reports thread, but perhaps I should have just put it here. This is sort of a "is this a tornado" post. Obviously you can only tell so much by a still picture, but what do you guys think of this photo? It sure looks like something to me. My perspective might be slightly skewed though, since any person who takes a photo like this is certainly hoping that what they shot was legit.

What do you guys think? Anything in the photo that convinces you of something either way?

A tornado was reported just west of this location right around the time this picture was taken. If it wasn't for that I'd probably be a bit more skeptical.

Joel,
We were on that storm. We were about 1mi WNW of Divernon (I-55), about 3mi ESE of Auburn, 3/4mi S of IL-104. Our gut reaction was that it was a tornado. We have video that shows very well-defined sides backlit by lightning, and a few more photos.

I will work to get the video on here ASAP. Here are some photos. Time is 7:38 PM CDT.

I sent these photos to Chris Miller, WCM at ILX, with the date, location, time, and what we thought it was. I have not heard back from him yet.

 

[Joel Wright]

Yeah Tony, you were very close to our location. Hell, you may have been on the same road lol. Pics look very similar to ours lol. Funny how so many of us from all different starting points end up in the same general location.

We met Brandon Sullivan in this location. I'd be interested in seeing if he captured anything that we may have missed.

 

[Tony Lyza]

Yeah Tony, you were very close to our location. Hell, you may have been on the same road lol. Pics look very similar to ours lol. Funny how so many of us from all different starting points end up in the same general location.

We met Brandon Sullivan in this location. I'd be interested in seeing if he captured anything that we may have missed.

Yeah, we were on W. Purdom Rd., about 3/4mi S of 104. We decided to get off of 104 since it looked like the couplet was riding right down the highway west of Auburn. In addition to our safety, we also noted that there were emergency responders in the area already by the 104/I-55 interchange, so we thought it best to just clear ourselves from the highway.

 

[Adam Lucio]

From what I remember of that storm during that location was a pretty mean looking shelf cloud back-lit by a green core. At times there were those typicall HP suggestive lowerings but I didnt notice anything to suggest a tornado was on the ground. I do recall the dust whirl in the field but given the shelf cloud I wrote it off in my mind as a gustnado.

The tornado Skip photographed was about 20 minutes before we got on that storm...we entered Pawnee [i think] just as the sirens were going off...or maybe that was Auburn.

Very interesting photos, I just went over all of mine and have nothing like that, just shelf clouds and rain shafts.

 

[Joel Wright]

Hey Tony, here is one of your photos enhanced. Looks very similar to what we captured...