Was with Pritchard most of the day, so many of my shots will be similar. Short story, since it's late (and I've been processing shots from this day for a little while, still trying to alleviate Saturday's pain), was on the first storm to go supercellular in IL from its earliest stages. Watched it form, lose, reform, lose, and reform beefy wall clouds in its classic stage before a gradual transition to sculpted HP (no photos quite yet of that evolution, but I do have some yet to process).
Tornado warning was issued for it for a little while shortly after our report (about 3 W of Bushnell or 5 NE MQB, I think) on the wall cloud as it began pulling scud up pretty hardcore and a small RFD cut came in from the WSW, about half an hour before it transitioned. After debating, we made the call to drop back west to a trailing cell that was more isolated and showed a more classic appearance on radar.
5-year structure. Beat anything I've seen come out of the Northern Plains structure-wise, and photos don't do it justice. But I tried my best. 'Course, I may come up with something better as the processing continues.
After it, too, wrapped up big time with a textbook hook (only to be foiled by new crapvection to its immediate south) and began to lose intensity, we let the cell go near Bluff City along the Illinois River near the Fulton/Schuyler County line. But as we went northeast toward Havana, we found a new elevated supercell with a strong updraft (indicated >3" hail on GR) that attempted to become surface-based and form a wall cloud right before our eyes.
We narrowly missed the core and saw an interesting show about 1/2 mile out over the waters of Emiquon NWR, and then stopped about a mile up 78 where hail had covered the road. We found mostly quarters and half dollars, but the stone in Drew's photo above measured very close to 2" in diameter, so it's not unfathomable to think that there were others out there as well.
A great day before the day; I was on top of the world after this day. But Mother Nature has a funny way of keeping us humble, as I learned the next day.
