3/8/09 REPORTS: IL/IN/MO

[Skip Talbot]

I'll throw this thread out there in hopes that it will encourage others with better reports to post.

I intercepted a tor warned cell near Springfield, IL at about noon and followed it northeast. The cells were rather close at that point and the area of rotation seemed to be embedded on that cell, so I couldn't make out any structure. I followed the storm as best I could, and had a nice highway that nearly paralleled it, but with 60 mph storm speeds and the cores of other cells getting in the way, I was not able to keep up. I dropped down to an unwarned cell south of it, and saw a rain free base with a short flanking line. I followed that storm for awhile before it too started to pull away from me. It was amazing how much of a punch these little storms packed. Winds were probably close to severe (and over in places I'm sure) with a lot of tree limbs down. The storms evaporated in the mixing out air and I called it a chase at about 1:30 pm, one of the earliest times I've ended a chase. Not the greatest chase, but it was definitely fun being back on the road, core punching a tor wanred storm, and seeing some nice low topped convection. I'll post a couple pics later if I have anything pretty.

http://skip.cc/chase/090308/

http://skip.cc/chase/090308/09030802.jpg

http://skip.cc/chase/090308/09030803.jpg

[APritchard]

I've chased some fast storms before, but this one about takes the cake.

Things looked really decent early in the morning with several strong tornado warned supercells, but things really started falling apart towards noon. I got on one decent storm near Lake City, Illinois west of Tuscola which had a decent RFB with scud rising into it, but I didn't last long on it.

The tornado threat seemed pretty low and storms weren't wanting to stay organized for very long so I decided to just call it off at that point. I stopped for a while to let the storms move away to shoot some convection shots on the back side before heading back into Champaign and filming some wind damage.

I tested out the BETA version of the new stream with TVN which worked flawlessly on my end. Next time I'll just target Springfield, since they seem to want to get hit with every event.

Pointless picture of the storm I intercepted near Lake City running away from me:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3326/3338740001_6edf24478d.jpg?v=0

This was about an hour after my intercept, and the storms were already this far to my east:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3336/3339570300_2f58803ff7.jpg?v=0

EDIT: Chuck Hurley of Springfield sent me an email with some photos of damage from the Springfield area and said I could post them on Stormtrack if I wanted, so I figured I'd add the link here at the end of my report.

http://s140.photobucket.com/albums/r21/qaeen/

[Adam Lucio]

Like Skip and Andrew said. Todays storm motions were absolutely horrible. Danny Neal and I got on the same storm Andrew was on I think. Our SN icons were pretty close and the fast rising and left to right motions we saw got us excited for a bit. We lost the storm as it flew to the NE and called it a day. It later went tornado warned in Indiana...

This pic pretty much sums up how the storms felt towards us today:
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8243/il0308090151.jpg

Full log here: March 8th (http://www.aerostorms.com/030809.php)

Due to the timing and typical instability issues I had low expectations today. It was fun to get out though finally as this is my latest start to a season since 06. Had the typical gpsgate issues as well as some lost data at times. I think I need a new setup.

[John Gnuechtel]

Was hoping for an easy local chase today. After driving south from my home in St. Joseph, I ended up coming right back by the time the line arrived. Storms were ultra fast. I had my video camera running for time lapse, and keyed in on a peculiar break between the back side of a northern cell and a mass of rain out ahead of a southern one. Cloud motion was kind of ragged and not all that impressive. But after loading the video into the computer and speeding things up 300%, it almost starts to look like an RFD notch, and the action to the right of it turned out to be pretty interesting. I'm kicking myself for not devoting more of the frame to said interesting stuff, but at least it's sort of in the shot. It was past in a flash, and quickly replaced by high winds, some small hail, and rainfall that momentarily peaked above 5 inches/hour. Within 10 minutes, the entire storm was past and moving away very quickly. It went severe-warned just after passing my location, and tracked all the way into northeast Indiana where it did some damage.

Videos are facing west and 3 times normal speed:
High Quality HD - 133mb (http://www.amazingcheese.com/Storms/3-8-2009_Storm_HD.wmv)
Medium Quality - 30mb (http://www.amazingcheese.com/Storms/3-8-2009_Storm_Small.wmv)

[Jerry Funfsinn]

Go figure, I tried to power up the rocket pack and found I must have left the power on the last time I used it and the batteries were dead. So I reluctantly used the TrailBlazer today with little success. I met up with two cells around Carlinville,IL the northern one tor warned. I knew I would not catch that one so I looked south and saw the Carlinville storm fast approaching.That is all she wrote, some heavy winds and I ran across some tree limbs in the road and a power pole snapped off. From that moment on it went more down hill.

http://www.creativejetstream.com/pictures/carterville2.jpg

Between the train I had to wait for and trailing wide a WIDEload for two miles the topper was the bridge out I encountered when the signs indicating it were blown into a ditch. From that moment on I was with the gear in the rear, a good indicator of storm speeds was as I drove east the shadows from the clouds were passing me at highway speeds in the fields beside me. Don't get me wrong, I was more than happy to be out today chasing since it's been 8 months since the last one. A bad day chasing beats any good day at work right?

http://www.creativejetstream.com/pictures/jerrysyard2.jpg

I arrived home to the new swimming pool in my yard from the two days of rain we've had.

[Brent A. Clair]

I had no intention to chase today, as I was on my way to a bowling tournament. But, my destination was one of the places hit!! We were just about 15-20 min behind the storm that went through Carlinville IL and probably went through the storm that hit Roodhouse IL. Biggest damage I saw was about 3 miles west of Carlinville. One house had part of a roof removed, another building had some roof removed, two grain bins levels, half of a machinery shed collapsed, and just up the road, a garage leveled. Easy call for tornadic signature. If only I was driving!!!

Nice warmup to the season.

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

I wasn't going to chase these storms because I am very much under the weather today - no pun intended. But when I saw the TOR warning for SW of SPI I decided I had to go. I took 51 south to 54 and finally got on some country roads and ended up near Latham. I waited the storm out there. I knew the storm that hit SPI was moving fast, but wow did it surprise me! I ended up going through the "circulation" (such as it was) that was indicated on GR3. I had small branches hit my car and some gravel too. No hail though. The storm passed so quick I was not able to stay with it so I decided to take some structure pics instead. Here a few of them. A very low-topped supercell complex. Overall I would say it was a good shakedown chase and not a bad chase for IL in early March.

[Glenn Schubert]

After a quick unload of my band gear from gig last night and a quick load of my storm chase gear, I headed north out of Carbondale, IL to intercept the tornado warned cell that was heading through Randolph Co IL. This cell was travelling at about 60mph, so I headed up Rt 51 to catch this cell. We heard reports of a wall cloud west of Mt. Vernon and saw what could be it, it first photo. A lowering developd from this, but we couldn't confirm any rotating - see second photo. (Sorry for the black dot in the photos, just some dust in the Canon Rebel) This cell produced apparent tornado touchdowns to my west in Randolph Co and to my east in Wayne Co, but did not see any. We just encountered very strong winds and some heavy rain. This was first chase for me to test the radar capabilities of my new Blackberry Storm...how appropriate!

[Chip Redmond]

I woke up today and didn't even consider chasing as models looked so bad yesterday. Just did my daily check and was astounded by the moderate risk and upon further review of the setup, just had to take advantage of the early season Sunday opportunity. So after yet another late start headed west. Target area was Seymour, IN.

Decided to go with the one with the most history that would also permit us to drop south. Like yall said they were hauling and knew we would only have maybe one shot at intercepting each cell.

So we intercepted the Tor warned cell in Ripley county just west of Versailles. It had decent inflow which didn't appear to be rotating at all. We let it go over us as we had no good roads to keep up with it. It took on weak rotation as it was directly over us. It started to strengthen a little as it went off to the east and then disappeared over the treeline. Its a bummer as it went on to produce a tornado just six miles away to the east.

As planned we tried to duck south but ended up at a dead end that shouldn't of been one that pretty much killed any chance. We did get to see a pretty, but very brief shelf cloud on the second storm in southern Ripley.

On the way back we stopped to do a quick storm survey about six miles north of Milan. It appears like it landed twice in about a half of a mile. Once hitting a barn ripping off a wall. Then picked up over a field. Dropped again just before the road, crossed and hit a house and garage. The house was relatively undamaged at first look but after looking closer it lost a post that held up the awning and the entire house was shifted a good ten, fifteen inches off its foundation. The garage lost part of its roof and had it tossed a good 50-60 yards. Pieces of it were taken as far as 500 yards and stuck up at the tops of the trees.

Was treated to some nice lightning and pretty convection on the return trip east. I have a feeling its going to be a good year.

I'll have a full write up by tomorrow night on http://www.scalialab.com

Chip

[Danny Neal]

Evening all,

Needed a good sleep so I just got done typing up my report on the days events in Central Illinois. It can be found...... HERE (http://northernilstormchaser.com/March-8th---Central-Illinois.php)


http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o124/ILSvrWxTorChsr/DSC00094.jpg



http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o124/ILSvrWxTorChsr/DSC00108.jpg

[Paul Hadfield]

Congratulations to all of you who played chicken with yesterday's storms and came home with anything. I'm with Andrew on the speed of this event for the last time I witnessed anything close was April 2, 2006 and even then, those cells were manageable. My day consisted of two opportunities including the feature presentation as well as a beefy boundary of some kind that trailed all the way down from Peoria off the SVR cell you northerners experienced around 8:30AM. I'm at loss for accurate description because it seemed outflow yet last time I made that call on a similar pre-game morning incident, I was wrong in that it was the actual cold front. Full report with pics and video here (http://pawleewurx.blogspot.com/2009/03/rocket-storms.html).

[Ryan Wichman]

This picture was taken last night, it was passed on by a friend who thought it was a funnel cloud. At first glance it looks very convincing, but I am not so sure now. It appears to be at the back end of the storm, not really in bedded in the storm itself and is very very close to the ground to not have any debris/dirt associated. Something about this photo does not seem right. Thoughts?

[Eric Graham]

I ended up chasing yesterday as well here in western Indiana. Intersepted a severe warned cell between Attica/Williamsport. And thats where things fell apart. Do to the storm motion and the lack of paved roads I lost the storm and ended the chase in Flora, IN where the storm blew the roof off a church. Had fun though for the first chase of the season and learned that Toyota Camrys even though have great gas mileage are sucky chase vehicles. LOL

[Jerry Funfsinn]

After reviewing yesterdays event and reading this LSR- 1630 4 W CARLINVILLE MACOUPIN IL 3928 8996 NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE EMPLOYEE HAS SURVEYED AREA AND HAS DETERMINED THAT DAMAGE WAS PRODUCED BY A TORNADO. INITIAL TOUCHDOWN OCCURRED APPROX. 4 MILES SOUTHWEST OF CA (LSX), I went over the GPS log and the video time code and came up with the following MAP (http://www.creativejetstream.com/images/MAP_CarlinvilleIL_3-8-09.jpg) and pictures. All views are looking south. At the time the storm was warned for high winds. I lost radar when I left I-55 and did not aquire it again until I routed back to I-55, so I don't have an idea what it looked like at the time. I beat the storm to Carlinville as the storm passed to the NW. Pictures #2 and #3 are closest to the time of the tornado report.
MAP (http://www.creativejetstream.com/images/MAP_CarlinvilleIL_3-8-09.jpg)
Picture #1 (http://www.creativejetstream.com/images/photo1_3-8-09.jpg) , Picture #2 (http://www.creativejetstream.com/images/photo2_3-8-09.jpg) , Picture #3 (http://www.creativejetstream.com/images/photo3_3-8-09.jpg) , Picture #4 (http://www.creativejetstream.com/images/photo4_3-8-09.jpg)
All of this information has been passed on to LSX.

[Benjamin Rock]

I chased the storms to the IL/IN border with a bud of mine. We targeted Kankakee along I-57 and managed to get a rotating wallcloud out of it that produced a tornado to our west by about 30 miles and continued on to IN to produce more tornadoes. It was a good early season test for the gear, and not a total loss. Michael(my bud) got some footage and stills of the storm as it apporached and passed us. The cell we were on got tornado warned and hit us with winds of 50+mph and nickle hail and was gone in about 10 minutes. Not a great chase, but a fun one.

[Jarrod Cook]

Mark Sefried and myself decided to chase today, even though we knew it was a marginal setup. It was Sunday and didn't have plans, so figured we would dust off the equipment and give it a shot. The storms were so lame we didn't even take any photos or video.

Got into position to intercept the "middle storm" that was entering into IL from MO, as the southern one was headed into bad chase terrain and appeared to be lining out. We got into place around Hamel, IL (Madison co.) and waited for it. It quickly turned into mush after it passed over STL and into IL. At this time, the northern storm was TOR warned and we decided to head back this way, as it was closer to the warm front anyways. This storm was not catchable, so we once again went for a cell to our south that quickly developed. Noted a brief and very weak wall cloud (no rotation) and followed it by heading NE on IL-16 as it paralled that road. Had to go through several podunk towns that slowed us down just enough for the storm to be uncatchable. Gave up at this point and enjoyed the post-storm non-TSTM winds. Measured a gust to 50 MPH on the new inspeed southeast of Decatur.

Next time, like Andrew said, I'll just head to SPI and save the trouble.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/product.php?site=ILX&product=PNS&issuedby=ILX

[Ben Holcomb]

I did a solo chase on Sunday. It was really good to get out. I managed to get on the cell in Southern Indiana that dropped the EF-3, and only missed it by about 15 minutes. I have a write up on my website at http://www.benholcomb.com/20090308.html

As far as the storms, they were moving at 70mph according to one of the warnings. There was no chance I was going to keep up with them. On top of that, I found out really quick that South Central Indiana is terrible chase country. It felt like I was chasing in the Smokey Mountains, complete with ear popping.

[Chip Redmond]

Write up is finally posted on our website. Heres the link: http://www.scalialab.com/news/chase_3-8-09.html


Chip