Adam Lucioand I set off for Central Illinois at 9 AM. Wasn't looking for much as this chase was more about what doesn't work and needs to be fixed.
We all were having a little fun in Tuscola, Illinois pre chase ;)
I couldn't believe how early we were chasing. By noon there were tornadic storms to our west and that just didn't seem right. We continued west to Hammond, IL and sat there hopefully to get the storm moving in from the WSW. However, the data had other plans and we lost connection. By this time our visibility had gone south as the storms were moving in from the west. We moved a couple miles toward Decatur and regained data only to find our "target" storm was weakening and no longer warned. So we sat on a county road near Oakley, IL, and weighed in our options. There were a pair of tornado warned storms going through the Springfield area and Peoria area. We saw our last gasp at a storm to the south near Lake City. So we blasted south on SR 32 into the town of La Place as the storm met us there. We got hit with a moderate west wind AOA 20 mph.....and then was unloaded on at the intersection of 32/US 36. Winds gusted to 50+ mph for about 30 seconds, visibility went to nothing and a loud roar from the wind was noted. It was a nice little core! Absolutely no CG was noted and in 2 minutes the rain had stopped. As we drove E on 36..... a lot of turbulence in the base was noted. The updraft base was pulling in scud in a rising motion from all directions into one concentrated spot. It wasn't anything but maybe WEAK rotation at best. It was cool to see for the 5 minutes we watched it before the storm was seemingly 100 miles away. After that storm, everything else was so far out of reach and we called it a day and headed to Champaign to get some picturs of the convection moving away. Overall a decent chase that was less than 500 miles roundtrip.
Dying severe warned cell near Decatur:
Base of newly developed cell near Lake City:
Video of the base, doesn't really show the turbulence as I had wanted it to, but it was there.
PICTURES:
Adam running for his hat after a gust took it off.
