6/19/09 REPORTS: IL/IA/MN

[Jim Zandonai]

Well I didnt have to travel 3 hours to IA. like yesterday to get some strong storms today.

First storms developed just west of Rockford and then the 2nd area moved in from the west which earlier caused much wind damage in EC IA and some of NW IL..

Headed toward northen Winnebago co. to try and get some of the wind that was indicated by radar..but didnt get anything..raced back south to the south end of the county..as a stronger storm was building and got blinded by heavy rain and standing water almost stalling the car.
The structure wasn't there so didnt take a pic..

Did get about a 1.5 inch hailstone early on though...A 'local chase' but may get to hit the road again here in N.IL later today..

 

[Marc Remillard]

6/19/09 REPORTS: MI, IN, IL

Indiana seems to be the action right south of MI border. Allen county tornado warning: decent supercell right n. of Huntington moving SE. tornado report earlier in Fulton county.

We (JF Massicotte, Caroline Richard and me) chased this supercell. We unfortunatly arrived 30 minutes too late to see this tornado (if it gets confirmed). We observed many cycles in this supercell, and some very nice rotation. The third cycle almost dropped down another tornado but failed.

Earlier today, before the initiation, we intercepted a small supercellular storm. We got a wall cloud, a funnel, and then the storm died.

We will slowly hit back home (Montreal), expecting to be involved in a direct hit by a strong squall line or derecho, lol.

 

[Bob Hartig]

Bill Oosterbaan and I left Prairie du Chien, WI, where we overnighted after yesterday's Iowa chase, around noon and headed south toward Davenport. As we approached the town, we could see cumulus towers pushing up along a clearly demarcated east-west boundary. We headed east down I-80, then dropped south toward Normal, IL. By the time we reached the town, several storms had fired up. The northernmost storm looked the best, and upon closing in on it, we spotted a large, well-defined wall cloud. We intercepted it and tracked with it until the storm began to lose intensity. Then we dropped south to another storm that had been gaining strength and exhibiting rotation on GR3.

This storm proved to be the storm of the day. We tracked east with it for several hours, witnessing some beautiful structure and rotating wall clouds. Just east of Westville, an area of rotation began to lower and close in on our vehicle. Both a tornado and rotating wall cloud were reported in this area. I can't vouch for the tornado, but we were within a few hundred yards of the rotation and I can tell you that it was rapid and close to the ground, and I can definitely confirm the wall cloud.

In fact, despite two tornado reports for this storm, Bill and I saw no tornadoes, though we were with the storm almost from its inception until it died out west of Crawfordsville, IN. Had there been decent backing winds at the surface, I have no doubt the storm would have been a potent tornado breeder. All the other parts of the equation were in place. But with weak, veered surface winds, the storm was outflow dominant for its entire life, from what I could see.

The mesocyclone, wall clouds, and clear slots nevertheless made for some cool structure photos. I will post some of them later. Right now, Bill and I are still on the road, headed home through a bunch of MCS garbage. Interestingly, most of Indiana and a part of extreme southern Michigan have been placed under a tornado watch. I don't have high expectations, and in any case I'm too tired to care about chasing a bunch of grunge at night, but the potential still makes the long ride back to Grand Rapids a little more interesting.

 

[John Farley]

As I said in my forecast thread, I was debating northeast MO vs. west-central IL. Near Mt. Pleasant, IA around 1:30, I noticed some TCU going up to my east, so decided to blast east on route 34 to intercept, as nothing much was happening yet in northeast MO. (There were some storms farther west, but at that time they were dying out once they got to central MO.)

A cluster of storms that appeared to have some supercell characteristics went up south or southwest of Galesburg, and I chased them from there to just east of Bloomington. But coming from the west, I was on the wrong side for most of the way, and each time I would catch up to a storm and finally get around to the south of it enough to see the updraft base, it would weaken and the next storm east become the dominant storm. Finally east of Bloomington I got around to where I could see the base of the last and at that time the strongest of the 3 I intercepted, but then it weakened, too. The middle storm did produce 2-inch hail and estimated 70 mph wind just west of Peoria, so it was a beast, at least for a little while. I was just to the northwest at the time, and observed a lot of motion but no real rotation in the lowered updraft of the storm just to the north of of the one that produced the 2-inch hail for a while before the northern one was absorbed into the stronger one that produced the hail. Couldn't see the updraft of the more intense one, though, due to wrapping precip. I observed a tremendous amount of thunder and lightning then, too. Later, I observed a short-lived wall cloud on a new storm that popped up southwest of Bloomigton and produced 3/4 inch hail there at 5:15, then wind I would estimate around 50 mph as the northern end of the bow echo racing in from the west went through Lincoln. Naturally after that passed over racing east at 50 mph there was a TOR warning issued just east of Lincoln, but apparently nothing came of it. On the way home to the STL area I could see impressive towers at the tail end of the squall line associated with the cell there that became a bona-fide supercell, but it was too far east for me to catch. There were 2 TOR warnings issued for that cell, and rotationg wall clouds and funnel clouds reported by spotters but no tornado.

Congrats to those of you that managed to hunt down the Danville cell - tornadic storms were very hard to come by today due to the largely unidirectional wind profiles - plenty of speed shear but little or no directional shear. And just too darned many storms. Now if we could have just averaged the number of daytime storms between today and yesterday, both days would have been better.

Pictures and a more detailed report coming on my Website soon.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Did not plan on chasing today after the accident yesterday, and getting home late and very sore the night before. Woke up around 2 PM, and headed to the doctor. Got a call from Mark Sefried as I'm in the waiting room about a supercell heading right for me. I obviously did not have my car, but my girlfriend Tia said she was up for a chase so we headed out in her car.

Intercepted the supercell near Champaign, but for most of it's early life it appeared mostly outflow driven. I was without data or even a paper map, but luckily this was a local chase and I knew the roads well. I was pleased though when Tia and I ran into Mark Sefried and Darin Kaiser on a desolate gravel road. However, as Bob Hartig mentioned in Vermilion County, IL near Westville it really tightened up. It may be the closest I've ever seen a storm come to producing a tornado with no actual visible touchdown. We watched the rotation tighten into a small rapidly rotating funnel cloud that passed almost overhead. However, after tightening up into the nice funnel cloud it broadened back out and that show was over. We were slammed by RFD in Westville and then had to lose the storm for a moment to do a couple river crossings and enter Indiana. The storm really got it's act together structurally near Cayuga, IN however quickly took another downturn near Crawfordsville.

Stopped for some fast food in Crawfordsville as the sirens blew for the bow echo approaching from the west. Were treated to a nice green sky and pretty banding on the shelf cloud, but the winds really died out before hitting town.

As Bob mentioned, despite all the tornado reports on this storm we never saw anything on the ground. A couple good rotating wall clouds, and a good funnel, but nothing tornadic.

I'll upload a video of the funnel and wall clouds later once I get a working laptop back. For now here are a couple photos of the storm as we approached it after the river crossings in western Indiana.

 

[Doyle McIntosh]

The Ball State storm chase team and I left Muncie Indiana at about 10:30 with two cars and headed for Illinois. We ended up sitting around the Illinois Indiana border for about 3 hours waiting for the storms to break the cap. We gathered data at a library in Boswell IN and then in Hoopeston IL where we discovered that two super-cells had formed just west of Campaign-Urbana.

We quickly raced south east on I-57 where we ended up core punching the southerly storm just north of Champaign, I'd say easily some 60 mph wind gusts along the intestate just north of the city. after getting slowed down by a traffic backup on 74 in Champaign we got off the interstate and headed south and eventually east towards the area of rotation in the storm.

This thing cycled a good 4 or 5 times while still in Illinois. As to what Bob Hartig said "In fact, despite two tornado reports for this storm, Bill and I saw no tornadoes, though we were with the storm almost from its inception until it died out west of Crawfordsville, IN. Had there been decent backing winds at the surface, I have no doubt the storm would have been a potent tornado breeder." we never saw this reported 30 second tornado either. We had 7 pairs of eyes staring right at the wall cloud and saw nothing. I did see a few other chasers in Illinois on this same storm including what I believe was Bob (judging from the MI plates), so it must have been one of them that called this in.

Crossing into Indiana the storm had the best structure. Classic HP meso look to it, with an RFD clear slot. For about a Minuet or two a funnel did form but quickly dissipated as the cell approached state road 63. Things started to fall apart as it crossed US 41 as the squall line from behind approached. Tryed to cycle back up once before completly falling apart southwest of Crawfordsville where the line behind ingulfed it. Some incredible lightning with the MCS on the way home tonight though, Pictures from all of this will be up within 24 hrs.

No tornado (that we saw) but still a great day!

RFD clear slot really working in here. This was about 15 min before the tornado report

Meso as it crossed into IN from IL. Produced a funnel just a Min later.

Post Funnel, after crossing 63

Near US 41, the beginning of the end.

Lightning from the MCS on the way home.

 

[Paul Hadfield]

I too followed the IL storm of the day from not long after development in Dewitt County. Intercepted at Maroa and saw the same mentioned cycling throughout the journey till finally abandoning at Urbana. Lots of energy at times including nice inflow features but didn't quite hit a point I thought it would produce till viewing over Urbana when I thought for sure something would happen. With each cycle, the rfd cutting down and around the back was very impressive to see not to mention refreshing considering the heat.

Abe liked it

Metaphor?

Squall line 1 at Atwood

Squall line 2 at Bearsdale

Lots of material for today, will have a blog up eventually. Congrats to all who scored and especially you Andrew.

 

[ccrosbie]

Hi everyone, thanks for sharing your chase accounts in the IL/IN area yesterday.

Having moved recently from Norman OK to the Indianapolis area (and getting treated to 2.5 inch hail at my house 2 weeks ago!) I was extremely anxious to finally have a decent supercell setup in Indiana. I made it a family chase affair with my wife and 2 kids and targeted the Lafayette area where it looked like early in the afternoon that the best convergence would be and where I expected the outflow boundary to be in the vicinity of this region during the remainder of the afternoon.

We arrived in Lafayette around 4 pm. Shortly after we noticed an isolated cell developing to the nw of town. We drove and intercepted the cell about 10NW of Lafayette. It had a nice rounded updraft base and inflow tail cloud extending a few miles to the east. The cell looked promising for the next 20 minutes. However between 430 and 5 pm, anvils from the developing storms in IL moved over providing subsidence and increasing cinh and we then watched the cell shrivel up and orphan anvil.

After that we ended up debating if it was worth trying to catch the storm moving out of Champaign (seeing the line accelerating to it's west) or try to catch the isolated supercell which we could see visually and that was sw of Ft. Wayne. We opted to call it a day and returned home by 630 pm. I guess you could say that we got lucky making that decision, since both the cell near Ft. Wayne died before we would have ever been able to catch it and the IL/IN storm didn't produce.

A little side note, my son (who's 4) was on his first long distance chase and despite loving storms and tornadoes (he loves Tornado Video Classics 1-2), did not want to get out of the car when we stopped to watch the developing storm NW of Lafayette. He was very adamant and told the storm to go away. I guess he got his wish! : )

 

[Jeff Hawkins]

I live and work in the Chicago area. Normally I work until around 5 or 5:30pm, but had been watching the forecasts for yesterday all week, and while I tried but couldn't get the day off, I did get the ok from the manager to work an early shift. The earliest I could start was 6am, so I did, and was out by 3pm. I had pre-packed the car with most everything, but I still needed to stop back home briefly to check the latest radar/forecasts, and pick up another thing or two. BTW, this is my first time contributing a report, as this year I got serious about storm chasing (did several local chases the past few years), so I hope you don't mind the lack of technical terms.

My chase target was going to be the Quad cities, but by 3:30pm things had already fired up there (as I was afraid they would), and had to decide whether to continue that direction, or change and head into IN, as I saw NWS had posted a new tor watch and there was no activity there yet.

I made the choice to hit IN, and trudged from the west suburbs on southeast through rush hour traffic/construction on I-294, then detoured to Hwy 30 because of warning signs of a 17 mile backup on 80/94 at I-65. I figured on driving to I-65, taking that down a ways, and keep track of the radar as things developed, to determine a decent exit point off the interstate (I have wireless laptop and GR3). I finally got to I-65 around 5:30pm. only to run in to a 20 minute backup southbound due to construction south of Crown Point.

Once through that, I could see on radar the supercell south of Lafayette, but I was nowhere close (up around fair oaks) and that the squall was approaching quickly from the west. I knew I wouldn't make that distance, but I also saw some isolated storms ahead of the squall which were approaching the IL/IN line, a bit closer. Iroquois county was tor warned with one of those cells, so I decided to try to intercept those, and figured I'd exit off Hwy 24 and head west and south from there.

Once I got to 24, I started to head west, but saw the storms I was targeting were losing their structure and the squall was overtaking them. Anything that was firing was way south of my location, south of Champagne and Lafayette, IN. At this point, I had to make the call whether to head east and stay ahead of the line, or go west for a second line that was near Lincoln, IL. I decided to head west, because of the time, and not wanting to have to drive 4+ hours home in the dark after being up since 5am...not smart.

The rest of the chase was more like a long country drive, as nothing was happening behind the initial squall (as you would expect). I was able to view some nice GC lightning strikes and some crawlers, so it wasn't a total bust. I got to do a 300 mile round trip and was back home by 10pm. The good stuff everyone else saw unfortunately fired just a bit too far south for me to catch this time around, but I did enjoy the ride and the attempt.

 

[Marc Remillard]

Note we were more that 100 miles south of the storm when it did the first cycle in the Allen county area. We drove as fast as we could. Here was the storm before its first cycle:



We were lucky it cycled 3 times, so we got the chance to observe a funnel and some nice rotating wall clouds

Strange day

 

[Kurt Hulst]

Tom Oosterban and I chased the first supercell that came into southern MI. Tom got out a little late so we were running behind on that storm. We decided to head towards Gary, IN on 80/90 because of the backing winds and it was on the northern end of the OFB. We should of dropped south sooner towards Lafayette. We got to I-65 and sat there for a few minutes and then decided to head SE from there as we noticed an area of agitated CU developing on satellite. This was the storm of the day and it exploded. Traffic on route 6, small towns, and stair stepping killed our attempts to get in front of this storm. We saw many wall clouds from the back side. We also saw a funnel try to produce but it quickly was cut off near Huntington. As we finally got within 5 miles of the base the cirrus canopy from the IL storms choked our storm off and the CINH was to much. The base shriveled up and the storm died.

We then headed back to GR on Hwy 33 out of Ft. Wayne. We tried to catch some lightning but there was just to much rain. Got home about 11pm.

My battery died suddenly on my video camera so I have 1 minute of video from the storm. I was also shooting in auto mode because I forgot to change it. So I have only two descent shots to show for the day.


This was around the storms second cycle. This updraft blew through the initial anvil that was already 50,000ft. I have not seen an updraft do this before pretty cool.

Here is a really crappy picture of the base just before it died. You can see striation from the backside just to the left of the house. This storm looked like a classic supercell.

 

[Chip Redmond]

Chased the Wabash Co (everyones calling it the Allen Co but it pretty much ended its life there while spending the most time in Wabash) storm in Indiana. Had a late start on it as we were a bit south around Muncie. Got there before the first rewarning and tracked it through Huntington Co and to its quite sudden death. Seemed like it went from a severe storm to nothing in less than 20 minutes! Some good structure and nice rotating wall clouds, though once again, no tornado. Very classic looking from the ground. Will try to get some radar and satellite grabs and finish a write up with pictures by this evening.

Chip

 

[Bob Hartig]

Here are a few photos of the Normal, IL-Crawfordsville, IN supercell, beginning with our approach from the north and then tracking with the business side of the storm as it headed east. Toward the end of its career, the meso took on a nice, striated appearance, but my photos of it at that point don't do it justice. I like these ones, though. In the third photo down, the whitish wall cloud in the foreground is rotating vigorously (though this is not the close encounter Bill and I had a bit earler near Westville).

BTW: I LOST MY CAMCORDER during this chase!!! It wasn't expensive--it's a Sony that I bought used from Kurt Hulst--but it has done a good job for me, and in it is the tape documenting this chase. If anyone happened to find it, please contact me.

 

[Adam Lucio]

I know technically this should be a DISC thread post since I didnt actually hop in my truck and chase, but I didnt need to.

I dont want to start a whole thread just for this.

Filmed the storm as it rolled through my area and caught a few large limbs being taken down off my neighbors tree. I measured the circumference at 11 inches. Official measurement out of Midway Airport, which is only 2 blocks from where I live was 62 mph.

 

[Jim Zandonai]

Saw the 2nd round mass of storms heading toward NW IL in the late afternoon /Eve and waited to see where they were headed.. I was watching the very strong winds headin for DVN as they raced NE.. after a while I headed south from my house to interecept some of the powerful winds.. Got caught in blinding rains again so ended up about 20 miles south where I got about a 55mph gust..took a pic of some trees blowing but it was a crap shot so didnt even DL it. Went further south where the main wind field was but didnt get anything.. On the way back Flooding was occuring where we had a foot of water in some roads almost stalling the car again.. The Airport apparently had 3.25 inches in 1 hour ! Not only that but the standing water possibly caused a train to derail and some cars exploded since they were carring ethanol..Some winds of 70mph were recorderd around where I was but I only got about 55. Still cant get a decent pic with this stuff but the rain and wind was the big story around here.
Hopefully next time we'll be able to get some pics..