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August 2nd, 2015 - NE. Illinois Chase

8/5/2015

1 Comment

 
This day had shown potential to be a nice summer-like severe weather day several days out. I never had any thought of chasing, as it looked like the main threats would be wind and hail from an MCS and line segments.

I was at Six Flags in Gurnee, IL during the late afternoon and evening with my girlfriend. After going on some rides and having some funnel cake we decided to leave and head over the Baskin Robbins down the street for some ice cream. While leaving and heading over there a storm had quickly developed to our east, and became severe as it approached. 

The storm started to hit while we were at Baskin Robbins, so we grabbed our ice cream and headed outside to watch it. It wasn't that interesting at first, and I threw out a comment that it could be better. It did get better, and quickly... Things picked up and we encountered hail up to penny size and winds gusts up to around 40mph. The wind, rain and hail combo put us on the mad dash to my car. Just after getting to in the car a tornado warning was issued for the storm, and looking at radar it was very likely a tornado was on the ground a few miles to our southwest. I decided to stay put and not move our position given the area of rotation was set to pass within our view looking south and southwest, and the road options in the immediate area were not great. Within a few minutes, a lowering came into view to our southwest. I was blocked by a building, so we could not tell if anything was on the ground, even though radar suggested it was likely. The area of interest continued to push into better view, where we saw it was indeed a tornado on the ground. It continued east into better view, as it started to weaken and lift.

Some pictures from this chase can be viewed below. Additional pictures can be found in the 2015 photography section.
Chase Statistics:
Tornadoes: 1
Wind: 40-50MPH

Hail: 0.75" (Penny Size)

SPC Severe Weather Reports:

Picture
1 Comment

June 22nd, 2015 - N. Illinois Chase

6/27/2015

1 Comment

 
This day showed potential several days out. Leading up to the event there was several concerns including how early day convection would evolve, how much destabilization would occur in the wake of this activity, and potential cap (warm air aloft) issues. 

As we moved into the day of the event it was evident the cap was no longer likely to be a major concern, but instead a derecho that formed the previous night in South Dakota and moved across the Plains and into Wisconsin and Illinois during the morning would be an issue. The derecho quickly weakened mid-morning, but left behind widespread convective debris, in the form of widespread cloud cover along with scattered showers and storms. Even into the afternoon hours these issues persisted, with a cluster of severe storms in the Illinois/Iowa border area. Even with these issues, the environment was able to recover rapidly and significantly mid-late afternoon, and scattered storms developed mid-afternoon in Iowa. These storms pushed ESE, two of which moved into NW. Illinois. The dominant storm was located west of Sterling, IL and was moving ESE along a remnant outflow boundary from the early day activity.

Before the storm was mature and was just showing signs of weak rotation, especially aloft, I was pondering whether or not to head out. It would be about a 1 hour and 45 minute drive from where I was at the time. I decided not to, but kept a watch on it. Eventually it was tornado warned, and I decided to pull the trigger and go out after it. At the time I was leaving the storm was still west of Sterling, IL and was turning into an HP supercell. After a quick stop home to get my gear I raced WSW to catch up to it. Along the way there were several tornado reports, and based on radar and reports, they were generally rain-wrapped.

Diving southwest I made it to the far north side Ottawa, IL in time to find a spot to watch the storm move in. Constant lightning illuminated a nicely structured HP storm. Rotation became stronger with a better couplet showing up on radar just as the storm moved from my NNW to ENE. To my north there was a power flash, and at the time I thought I might have gotten a quick glimpse of a rain-wrapped tornado, but I was unsure.

I ended up following the storm east on Route 6, with the main rotation being just a few miles to my north the whole time. I made it to Seneca, IL where I had to stop as the storm had pulled ahead of me a bit, and rotation had once again increase and was crossing the road a few miles ahead of me. At my location there was torrential rain and strong winds. I decided to call it a chase at this point, as I had gotten behind the storm, and a line of storms behind the supercell had also started to move through. 

According to the NWS Chicago surveys there was indeed a confirmed an EF-1 tornado just north of where I was sitting in Ottawa, and would have been where I saw the power flash and thought I had a glimpse of the tornado. In addition to that, I captured the power flash on video, and it seems the power flash illuminates an object in the rain shield. Now whether that was the actually a tornado, scud, or heavier rain/hail, I'll never know for sure. Some pictures of this is below. Also, NWS Chicago confirmed and EF-1 tornado where the area of rotation crossed Route 6 a few miles ahead of me while sitting in Seneca.

Some video from this chase can be viewed below.
Chase Statistics:
Tornadoes: 1
Wind: 50-60MPH

Hail: None
SPC Severe Weather Reports:
Picture
1 Comment

April 9th, 2015 - N. Illinois Chase

4/13/2015

0 Comments

 
This day showed potential several days out. There was several concerns including how early day convection would evolve, how much destabilization would occur in the wake of this activity, and direction of lower level winds. All of these potential issues did not have any mitigating effects in the end.

Like usual on local chases I was slow/pessimistic to leave, and didn't get out to door until about 1:45. I had my brother tag along, and we had an initial target of Dixon, given the warm front was in the area and there was and OFB just to the north. We made it to Dixon as an initial storm was moving in. It featured a nice base/lowering for a time, but weakened as it pushed northeast. After it passed we waited in Dixon for quite a while to see how things would play out. New storms developed to our southwest and started to look interesting. We ended up heading through Dixon to make a play on one of the storms, which was now just to our west. This storm went on to be the Rockford tornadic storm. We got a view on it and a nice base/lowering while on the northwest side of Dixon. We continued to follow it north towards White Pines State Park, and then east through Oregon. As we made it east of Oregon we witnessed two brief touchdowns to our north, as the storm was near RFD airport and New Milford at the time. We continued to stair-step northeast with the storm, before finally dropping off of it as we sat south of I-90 and it continued northeast through Boone and McHenry counties.

At this time we headed back south to make a play on the what would become the Rochelle storm. After heading south for just a few miles on Irene Rd we got view of the tornado to our southwest. We pulled off to the side just north of Route 72, as we were in perfect position. We had a good view of the tornado for a decent amount of time, and were within about a 1/2 mile at the nearest point. This tornado probably featured the second best motion I've seen, only behind the Moore '13 and ahead of the Wayne 13' tornadoes. It featured multiple vortices, suction vortices, a horizontal vortex aloft and a satellite tornado that ended up touching down in the field next to us about 1/4 mile away. We continued to jog north/east and stayed with the storm and witnessed what appeared to be two other brief tornadoes to our north (Would have been southwest of Garden Prairie) while on Glidden Rd. NWS Chicago has since confirmed these two brief touchdowns were actually the end of one single tornado that had developed further to the southwest while we were driving.

Unfortunately, this fool left his camcorder on all day so the battery was dead by the time tors started happening, so I didn't get any quality video.

Some pictures and video from this chase can be viewed below. Additional pictures can be found in the 2015 photography section.
Chase Statistics:
Tornadoes: 5
Wind: 40-50MPH

Hail: 1.00" (Quarter Size)
SPC Severe Weather Reports:
Picture
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