5/30/08 REPORTS: IL/IN/MO/KS

[Skip Talbot]

Intercepted a massive wall cloud near Waverly, IL, the last supercell before it all went linear near Springfield. I was getting ready to move as the wall cloud was moving overhead and some locals videotaping behind me started shrieking in terror. I looked up and a big debris cloud passed right in front of me with a loud waterfall rushing noise. I was waaaaaay too close. The locals panicked and drove north straight into the core. I got cored by the hook with golfballs, fell behind the line and called it a chase. Wild day.

And unless I'm mistaken this was the reported funnel and later tornado that went over Springfield. Shot at 6:13 pm looking north from 72 just west of the city:

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Joel Wright, my brother Josh and I missed the apparent stovepipe in Auburn by mere minutes. Punched south through Springfield and got into position just as it morphed into a pretty nice shelf. Met up with Brandon Sullivan also. Nice to meet a fellow ST member out on the road!

EDIT: Here are a few pics as the shelf plowed toward us.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Got 4 sep. discrete supercells today from Lincoln to Winchester. Missed the Franklin tornado that Skip got because I spent a minute too long in Franklin. I figured I could get through town before it did it, but sure enough once I was in the downtown area I heard them on the radio yelling about the tornado touching down. I followed a couple cops who had all their lights going out of town but we didn't make it before the hail core overtook us. Stressed out and irritated I called the chase right there.

Here's a shot of the New Berlin, IL supercell around 6 PM.

 

[Doyle McIntosh]

Saw A tornado tonight in Western Carrol County in Indiana. Photos and video don't give it justice but its there. I will post pictures and video in the morning. On the way back to Muncie I also was nailed by a squall line moving through Indianapolis and ended up sitting on the side of I-465 for 20 min as we were hammered by 50+ knt winds.

Saw A tornado tonight in Western Carrol County in Indiana. Photos and video don't give it justice but its there. I will post pictures and video in the morning. On the way back to Muncie I also was nailed by a squall line moving through Indianapolis and ended up sitting on the side of I-465 for 20 min as we were hammered by 50+ knt winds.



EDIT:

I chased with a friend of mine Korey Klien and we were able to get out of Muncie by 5 today, and after stopping in Kokomo for a wireless connection decided to just keep moving west on 26. From Rossville we went north on a state road about 8 miles and positioned ourselves to intercept a tornado warned storm moving out of the Lafayette area. Heres a view as the storm approached and as a shaggy wall cloud type thing appears.

As it gets closer we can see a clear base with rapid rotation and rising and rotating fingers of scud (what turned out to be mini funnels) and all of a sudden a few of these fingers touch down and rapidly rotate about each other. Contrast sucks on the camera but in real life it was much more obvious.

here there are two vorticity's on the ground

the tornado's would only last 10-15 seconds and this went on for about a minuet and a half before we jetted east to avoid its path. After producing, the meso became very rain wrapped and turned into a green monster, as it was doing that the storm also became quite outflow dominate and fell apart

We quit on this storm and drove as fast as we could south as it was getting dark to get into the path of a storm moving from the Cayuga area towards the west side of Indy. We made it to Brownsburgh and were clobbered with heavy rain and the biggest burst of CG's id ever seen. We made it finally to I-465 (the Indy loop) and all of a sudden were blindsided by the squall line moving east. Ended up having to pull off the road with every other vehicle we saw. I experienced constant winds of at least 30 kts. with gusts that had to be near 60. It was wild. During this time too there was so much lightning i wasn't sure if my eyes were beginning to play tricks on me when I'd look away and still see a bright bolt. I will have video uploaded sometime tomorrow and probably post a link at some point tomorrow as well. Nice to finally have some action in Indiana as we close out the month of May.



crappy video of tornado. in the first frame if you pause you can see two small funnels touching down and as i go into the car they lift, but again towards the end of the video two almost transparent ropes come down. http://www.youtube.com/user/DoyleM2006

 

[John Farley]

I also got four supercells, all around Jacksonville, IL and southwest of there. Actually, the fourth one almost got me. All four were tornado-warned, and three of them produced, though not while I was on them. They all had impressive wall clouds, though, and some likely funnels. The third one produced a huge, striated wall cloud of the kind you just don't see in Illinois - about as close as we get to a mothership in these parts:

This wall cloud was at least a couple miles across, if not more - one of the largest I have ever seen.

After this storm cycled and produced another wall cloud a little before 7, and soon thereafter, things got a bit more exciting. After a bit of road confusion, I was about to give up the chase a couple miles north of Woodson for lack of an east option, when I noticed a lowering with violent motion and some rotation just to my west or WSW. Just then, the warning on the WX radio sounded to announce a TOR based on rotation 2 miles west of Woodson. Seeing a nasty blue-green core coming at me from the west and northwest, I knew I needed to get out of there, so I blasted south on route 67, trying to either beat the meso or thread my way between it and the approaching core behind it. Soon either the lowering I first saw or another one was looming right ahead of me, now a solid, bulbous lowering. I pulled off to let it pass ahead of me, then blasted south behind it. The lowering looked to be just a few hundred feet above the ground over the field just to my east between me and the town of Woodson. I really thought a tornado was about to touch down in the field or in the town. As soon as I passed it I was blasted by a dusty RFD that I would estimate around 60 mph or so. No tornado occurred there, but the same storm did produce a series of tornadoes beginning about 12 or 13 miles east of my location, including the one Skip got. It also produced 3.25" hail south of New Berlin - glad I managed to avoid the hail core!

All in all, an excellent chase, even though I missed the tornadoes. Still, some of the best storm structure I have seen in Illinois.

Full chase report coming on my Web site in a couple days - I will post an update when it is ready.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Matt Fischer, Danny Neal and I intercepted 4 tornado warned storms today.

#1 formed south of Bloomington and looked more like a bow segment on radar, visually it had the largest wall cloud lookalike scud tag Ive ever seen.

#2 Was along I-72 and the route 4 exit on the SW side of Springfield, video taped a funnel cloud, shortly after a tornado report came in at 5th and cedar which wasn't at all far from our location, we never noted any power flashes or evidence of ground circulation, but we had a poor view of the ground from our vantage point so its hard to say for sure.

#3 was near Mount Pulaski, storm had a nice large wall cloud that quickly morphed into a beautifull white shelf cloud back-lit by a green core. The kind up until now Ive only seen in the plains. [I believe Jeremy posted pics of this storm]

#4 was the storm near Waverly that everyone was on, somehow we missed the tornadoes, probably because we got on it late after getting suckered in by storm #3 and following it a little too long.

Missing the tornados stings a bit, but Im pretty pleased with the structure witnessed today, especially by Illinois standards...Got treated to a nice CG fest on the way home. No hail today for us.

Congrats to those who bagged.

Storm 2 had one of the coolest rain shafts Ive seen

Storm approaching Springfield.

 

[Joel Wright]

Had to work till about 3 today. Wasn't in too big of a hurry to get out of there since I thought the chase would be much closer to home. The morning convection pushed the action much further south into central Illinois. So, after getting home and looking over things I gave Jeremy a call, and we decided to go for it. By this time it was already a bit past 4. There were already several tornado warned cells down west of Springfield.

I got to his house by around 4:30, with his brother Josh arriving soon after. We gathered up all the gear and hopped on I-74 south out of the Quad Cities.

Initially we were going to try to make a run at the impressive looking supercell near Springfield, but as we approached it began to look less desirable. A powerful tornado warned supercell was approaching to our southwest, so we decided to make a run at that one instead. We were concerned with a bulging line segment just west of this storm, that sure looked to overtake it fairly shortly. We were hoping to get to the cell before it was undercut by the outflow dominated segment.

Well as we approached Auburn from the east, we could tell that the line had caught our cell. It was still very impressive to say the least. Decent inflow was streaming into a very heavy looking cloud base that stretched seemingly for miles from south to north. Where the merger of the outflow dominated storm and the supercell met, there was a very interesting looking notch. It almost appeared that something was shrouded in the rain back in that notch. Even in Jeremy's picture above, you can see a few interesting looking "shadows". Since it's so late, we still haven't reviewed the video, but hopefully after viewing that we'll know a bit more. There was a cone tornado reported near Auburn around the time the pics and video were taken.

Before long a fairly nasty looking shelf was rapidly approaching, with a dense rain/hail core right on it's heels. We left the area we had pulled off right as it hit. We drove south about 5 miles or so through some very heavy rain and hail until we got south of the storm. After shooting some lightning and as darkness approached, we called it a chase.

All in all a fairly interesting chase. Sure wish our storm had remained isolated a bit longer, but that's chasing.

As Jeremy said we met Brandon Sullivan out there. Couldn't talk too long since the heavy rain/hail core was about to smash us lol.

 

[Brad Emel]

I also saw the tornado that did damage south of Waverly, IL. I was driving east nearing the town of Waverly when I saw the tornado in my passenger side rear view mirror. YIKES!!! Like Skip I was pretty close to the tornado. The tornado passed to the south of Waverly gaining size and strength. I drove south of Waverly where I lost sight of the tornado and got cored. There was the normal golf ball size hail, blinding, rain, and heavy winds. Then the rfd winds tossed a huge barrel of some sort into my lane and I slammed into it. I was finally able to assess the damage 15 miles south when the rain let up. The whole front plastic bumper was loose and parts were cracked. Oh well, vehicle damage is a risk for chasers.



There were some really impressive wall clouds and funnels today. Congratulations to all who scored today. I’m glad I didn’t have to drive out to the Great Plains again to see a tornado!

 

[Bill Doms]

MN severe pulse storms

Not quite enough stretching today. Few more pics here

 

[David Draun]

We got to the late show today, but did manage to capture the spectacular supercell near Waverly, IL. The structure on this thing rivaled much of the stuff we saw in the Plains earlier this week, since we did not get on the long-tracked super-structure in Kansas that everyone else saw. Anyway, the lightning on this thing seemed to be hitting in the same spot for a while under the vault. As the OFB closed in behind it, it appears there may have been a funnel or a touchdown. I will be reviewing my video, and judging from some of the pics I've seen from the closer chasers, there could very well be a tornado in there. On to video review, hopefully the trip's final tornado count will be at 3!

 

[Colin Davis]

Briefly, Scott Kampas, Garry Wellman and I opted to play Northern Missouri on this day, as it looked like crap everywhere to us. Still trying to figure out what the IL folks saw in their morning forecasts that we didn't (nothing pushed us to IL over MO...although it still didn't look great in MO either). Sour grapes I suppose. We got on the first supercell of the day near Ray, MO, and followed it to the east for awhile. It was, by far, the most intense updraft of the day in any state; the IL storms got it done at the low levels, and our storm did not. Simple as that.

Congrats to my IL brethren on a fine day. Wish we could have been a part of it, guys!

Just a quick shot of the area of "interest." It tried to get its act together several times, but here was a mere inflow/outflow hybrid.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Intercepted 4 supercell storms from SW of Pekin, IL and points west of Springfield towards Jacksonville / Waverly. Pictures are provided below...

Above: Wall cloud and possible debris / dust swirl underneath.

Above: Funnel and wall cloud (near I-72).

Above: Wall cloud east of Jacsonville, IL.

Above: Rotating bowl-shaped lowering.

Full report is below at the link provided...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2008.htm#MAY19

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I had a few hours vacation time, so I left work at 12 noon and headed out from Lansing, MI. I didn't want to do this trip solo, so I ended up going with my dad. He farted around for 25-30 minutes getting going, so we didn't get on I-69 until 1pm. We made it down to central IL just in time for the cell crossing I-57 to go Tornado Warned. It wasn't very impressive, and the cells to the SW were, so we dropped west on US136 then southwest on IL-54. Made it to Clinton in time to drive through the heavy raincore. Couplet was showing up over my head, as we shot south out of Clinton. Saw some good cloud formations and a possible funnel? but nothing conclusive. Gave up pretty quick on that cell as it was losing its intensity quickly, and went through Decatur and west on I-72.

We shot west to Mechanicsburg, then south to intercept the cell coming out of Springfield. The cell was absolutely marvelous looking, and we stuck with that for awhile.

Eventually we decided to head southwest again to catch the cell that would produce the tornado near Waverly. We were running on fumes after driving almost 500 miles and had to stop for gas, and that would unfortunately put us far enough behind to miss out on the tornado. We also got stuck at a 1 lane bridge (which seemed to happen a few times - IL Must be rebuilding most of their bridges) which stopped us for 3-5 minutes. We missed out on the tornado, but still managed to see some intense lightning, a great cell structure and very very green skies.

You can view my video at http://www.severestudios.com/May-30-2008-Central-Illinois-Supercell-Video

 

[John Farley]

I have now posted my full chase report, with lots of photos and a radar image showing three simultaneous hook echoes, at the following Web location:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase53008.htm

 

[Joel Wright]

Well after reviewing pictures and video, it sure looks like we managed to capture something up in the notch of where the supercell met the merging cell from the west. We were positioned just east of Auburn when this photo was taken at 7:37pm. A trained spotter reported a cone shaped tornado just west of Auburn at 7:38pm. One would have to believe this is it. It's hidden in rain and darkness, but it sure as hell looks like a tornado to me.

If you stand back about 10 feet from the monitor, you can see it better. The light reflecting off the left side of the funnel is what's convincing to me.

If it weren't for the reports of tornadoes in the area I'd say maybe I'm just looking too closely, but considering the time this was taken and the ground reports I'm pretty convinced this is in fact a tornado.