5/30/08 DISC: IL/IN

[Andrew Pritchard]

Okay Brian, THAT is a tornado. I've met and know of the Thies' and know they knew their stuff so was interested in seeing what they got.

They certainly caught a tornado, but everything else I saw shows nothing but rain. This has a clear tornado underneath an obvious wall cloud.

 

[Tony Lyza]

I will agree that what we "caught" was not the tornado, but the rain wrapping around it. The tornado was positioned south of where our pictures were aimed.

 

[Skip Talbot]

I could definitely see how if you weren't close enough or at the right angle you'd be staring at a rain wrapped tornado. That storm was difficult to spot as there was very heavy precip behind the updraft base. Richard's shots look very similar to what I saw 10 minutes earlier near Waverly:

In the last photo the tornado was definitely still on the ground as I could distinctly see a broad circulation on the ground with lots of small suction vortices inside. Being able to identify it in this stage from a position other than my precarious location would be very difficult. I don't doubt you guys were looking at it, but being able to visually identify it through that heavy precip would be extremely hard. I had to wait for the tornado to cross the road and then instantly got cored by golfballs, and so could not pursue it to see how long it lasted.

Here's the radar at the time of tornadogenesis, 7:17 pm, and my location plotted as the white circle:

Its interesting how embedded the storm is starting to become at this point.

Here's the full radar KILX base reflectivity loop.

 

[Danny Neal]

Rich posted a youtube video of what he saw. In his video it was VERY difficult to see even at close range. You had to be right underneath it.

 

[Richard Thies]

I'm glad to have my ST account back working again. It has taken me awhile to find the time and figure the video quality issue out for uploading to YouTube, but I've finally got a little better quality video uploaded then that extremely dark, poor quality original one I posted of the Waverly, IL tornado.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odYAP5TxKjg