6/23/10 REPORTS: OH/IN/MI/IL

[Chip Redmond]

I got a few minutes to burn while this second line slowly makes its way to northern Ohio.

Chased for a squall line intercept in north-central Ohio but got treated to the Richland/Ashland Co storm. It got ate up by the squall line before it could do anything, but still got tor warned. Really wished I could've left about an hour earlier. Worst damage was in the home neighborhood and not where we ended up. It never fails.

Full report here: http://chip-redmond.blogspot.com/2010/06/6-23-10-local-chase.html?spref=fb

Also, the above link is my new blog! Give me some feedback on there if you want and/or subscribe!

Chip

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Turned a bummer day into a pretty interesting one by getting out ahead of the line in north-central Illinois this evening. Things looked pretty bleak, but I noticed some isolated cells erupting ahead of the line west of La Salle, IL. I quickly made my way towards Interstate 39 and dropped south. I recalled that the outflow boundary from morning storms was draped along Interstate 80 and made my way that way in hopes something could root to this and remain discrete. The line more or less congealed, but I noticed one storm that was an obvious embedded HP supercell. I made this my play, getting ahead of it and stopped on the west side of Oglesby to watch it come in.

Witnessed a good circulation in the "notch" region of the HP which passed almost directly over head. Noted very strong *inflow* blowing into the mesocyclone as the circulation passed -just- to my south right over town before everything got blown over by the main core and straight line winds. Thought maybe I'd get a brief touch down right near me, but it wasn't to be. Pretty darn fun core, no less.

Made my way back up towards DeKalb detouring around a blown over semi thanks to a heads up from Scott Weberpal. Tia and I then enjoyed some Italian Beef sandwiches and a big chocolate shake at Portillo's up here under a big yellow mammatus filled sky.

Not a bad chase at all, albeit tornado-less.

Rotating portion of the base passing just south:

Full size : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHbT32lAeU

 

[rdale]

Left Lansing around 7pm as storms started up near Kalamazoo. Too many formed there so I let Ben take that route and I shot towards Indiana.

Made it to the state line and initial thinking based on early spotter reports was to take route 6 west, but saw how fast the stuff was moving and needed to go a little faster myself so hit the Toll Road.

Got off at Howe, IN (and exited for free - they were whisking everybody through the exit, not sure if it was because of the weather?) and saw a Holiday Inn Express with a large field to the west of it. So planted there, watched the approaching stuff with just about all the occupants coming out front, and endured 5+ minutes of sustained winds > 50mph and gusts to 70mph.

I considered get back on the tollroad to catch the line again, but given the time of day (pitch black) and no exits -- passed on that. Great lightning show on the way back home.

 

[Andrew Herron]

Got to Marshall, MI with Mike Bishop and waaaay too much time to kill. Seen others trying to make a play on something north of I-69, but we stayed put and watched the show start up in Illinois. Around 7pm we moved East and South to get on some cells starting to pop up SW of our position, ahead of the big tor warned cell just moving onto the lake from Chicago. Worked our way South, then back to I-94 and core punched the cell as it blew up and began to form a line along I-94. After punching it we drove South on 127 to get a better view and position. I was on the phone quite a bit with GRR about how things looked. Only managed to catch a very mean looking shelf cloud and a wall cloud without any rotation or lowerings. We had to dive South to US-12 (Michigan Ave) and used that to follow the line of storms all the way to US-23. After that we lost light and felt it safer to just call it a night and get back home. Unfortunately the storm decided to follow us and we had to drive through some of the stronger cells east of the main rotation. While we were on the cell for a long while, we only had visible light for about 2/3 of it, none of which we saw a funnel or rotation. When the reported touchdown occurred South of Ann Arbor we were more concerned with driving through the torrential rain and strong winds (and not getting clobbered by it).

 

[Adam Lucio]

Caught up with a massive HP supercell [I think the same one Andrew was on] south of Dixon. Radar showed embedded rotation to our north so we made an attempt to drive east through the hook area, or "hook slicing" as I like to call it. That did not work as this storm brought some of the heaviest white out rains I have ever driven through [seriously I could not see a damn thing and had to slow to a crawl] along with gusts probably reaching 75 which sent tree branches falling all around us and some small hail.

We gave up that plan and dropped south to attempt to get ahead of it in precip free air but it had already lined out. I watched in angst as a tornado warned supercell tracked right over my home neighborhood in Chicago.

Called chase, had dinner, saw the same mammatus and documented lots of tree damage near my house on the way home.

Full report online including video and pictures:

 

[richrozeboom]

I was outside the town saline and the lightning went from 1 per second to over 3 per second! I stopped the car and turned the lights off and the whole sky was strobing. Then one bolt hit about 200 yards away. Then another. Then one hit the power pole in front of me and sparks flew! Small branches began to hit my car while i was driving and then tree branches started falling into the road. I swerved around them but i was very concerned the trees were going to fall on my while driving. The wind and rain picked up so severely that i couldn't see further than 20 feet. Only the lightning was showing me the violent angle e trees were at. I drove as fast as i could and made it into that town to find a tornado had just touched down.

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

Noted on Tuesday afternoon that the SPC had issued a rare Day 2 Moderate Risk for Michigan. Wow! Images of a Bowdle like wedge churning through the Michigan countryside flashed before my eyes and I decided to take the following day off from work.

High hopes were quickly dashed by Wednesday morning as a massive MCS made it way into the state with its associated cloud debris. It didn't clear the area until the afternoon. As is normally the case, this pushed an outflow boundary Southward into Northern IN dimming any prospects for a local chase.

I spent most the day at home near Lansing trying to decide between various bad options as one normally does when there is only a 5% tor prob and veered winds. South options in IL/IN looked bleak as it was quite clear that storms down there would quickly go linear which turned out to be the case. I held out some hope for a Northern option in Central lower MI where the storms would be more scattered in better chase terrain. However, mixing, warming aloft, blocking of moisture transport from the South, and lack of a good trigger ruined prospects there. Some of the HRRR model runs did suggest that storms would fire along the retreating boundary/thete E advection gradient near the I-94 corridor which turned out to be the case.

Towards evening, I noted the cap breaking near the Lake Michigan shoreline in Allegan county. I waited a few minutes for storms to organize before heading South on 127 from Lansing. I crossed an intense moisture gradient near Mason with the dewpoint jumping 10 degrees over a very short distance. I could see this very clearly visually with layers of moisture streaming in from the SW. I intercepted a multicell cluster that was training along I-94. Eventually, one of the storms out front near Jackson suddenly developed a barage of intense forked lightning, organized its inflow and became supercellular and tornado warned. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the forward flank region on the storm so couldn't see visually what was going on. With darkness setting in, the storm in a urban area, and only showing weak rotation, I called it a day. The storm did go on to produce one of the only two tornado reports of the day in Washtenaw county.

 

[Danny Neal]

West Brooklyn, IL - Hook sliced an OF dominant HP supercell. 3 inch per hour rains 70+ mph winds.... God I love storm chasing

 

[Colin Davis]

Not much to say on this day. Winds were largely unidirectional, with our only hope for discrete supercells being that there was speed increase with height and any boundary interaction. Supercells and tornadoes were possible early in storm evolution, and one discrete cell did form for about an hour, but it was near the river and thus almost completely unchaseable, although many tried anyway.

Nate Williams and I traveled north to where I-74 and I-80 intersected, but I wanted to get a little further east to get away from the terrain of the river, so we headed to Geneseo and went a little north out of there. We watched as several updrafts tried to do something; most didn’t until one cell that was semi-discrete presented itself in the form of a gust front and some decent rising motion under the updraft as it tried to form a wall cloud. Although it remained unimpressive, we traveled a few miles east to see what it would do (gusted out quickly), and after some debate of whether we could get in front of the bonafide supercell in Lee County, we eventually headed south on IL78 in an attempt to get ahead of the forming line and head in the general direction of home.

This turned out to be a good decision as many chasers who were flying toward it quickly abandoned the cell, and we were able to get a head start on the line which was swiftly overtaking us. We got to Annawan and noted some stronger winds as we reached closer to the leading edge. About two miles south of town, though, I noted some rain curtains FLYING east across the corn field directly to our and had literally just enough time to only say, “OH %#!*â€￾ and get into a small driveway so that we weren’t completely exposed to winds coming across our side. Luckily, we had just gotten south of power lines that ran parallel to 78 on the west side, as the winds were some of the strongest I’d witnessed.

I reported estimated winds of 70mph as the event was ongoing (I’ve never been great at estimating winds, though, to be fair -- I tried to not overestimate in my report), but after the wind died down we drove around the immediate area to see what kind of damage had been done. The corn in four fields around us had been almost completely flattened, and in a yard near our position, there was a foot-and-a-half diameter tree snapped off a foot above the ground, among other things. We reported all this damage to the NWS, and checked other reports from the area. A spotter in Annawan, two miles to our north, reported 80mph winds (estimated), but interestingly, chaser friends Mark Sefried and Jarrod Cook reported only 50-60mph winds (and no damage) about 15 miles to the east.

My guess, then, is that we got caught in an embedded microburst, because our winds were no doubt much stronger than 60mph. In fact, in a later text to Jarrod, I compared the winds in our location to those in the RFD that I witnessed on the supercells that produced the Wakita, OK tornadoes earlier this year and the Glen Elder, KS tornadoes in 2008.

A rough (albeit fun) chase for a photography-based guy like myself, but as I sit here writing this account, two opportunities may present themselves Tuesday and Wednesday of next week in the Northern Plains. I may go.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I chased twice this day, however, the morning chase was very lame. The evening chase, however, netted me the highest winds I have recorded to date - 79.9 MPH measured with L.B.'s anemometer.

My recap is posted at http://www.benholcomb.com/Chase-Accounts/20100623