4/23/09 REPORTS: IL

[John Farley]

Got on a couple strong storms in west-central IL near Macomb. No tornado potential with these, but still some decent storm structure:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase42309-3.jpg

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase42309-4.jpg

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase42309-7.jpg

The second storm, which was more isolated, seemed to go up on the outflow boundary of the first, over northeasterly surface outflow winds from the first storm. The upper winds were from the southwest, a combination which 1) stretched out the storm giving it an LP look (though I would not call it a supercell) and 2) causing the rainshafts to be very slanted. Both of these features can be seen in this picture:

http://www.johnefarley.com/merge42309.jpg

This picture, my first try at a photomerge panorama, is too wide to imbed, so to see it please click the link above.

A full chase report and more pictures can be found at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase42309.htm

[APritchard]

I wasn't going to start a thread over it, but since one has been started already I'll share a few photos I got on more of a "photo run" than a chase yesterday evening.

The storms sucked, so I looked for something to add as a foreground to make them less boring and wound up near a windfarm southwest of Bloomington. Apparently it just went up as they still had construction signs everywhere. This wasn't the pre-existing much larger windfarm near Leroy, east of Bloomington.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3530/3469487459_b90208a442.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3639/3469488799_ba93057716.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3563/3469489763_bd9fe27b79.jpg?v=0

[Ryan Wichman]

I have to admit that I played the southerly game down near Quincy hoping to get a real nice storm if one could develop down there. Of course, it never did. Anyway, we shot back up to Macomb near the tail end of the event to find some others in the group had a picture of what appears to be a funnel (I will see if i can get my hands on it). One of my other friends who is not into weather or chasing reported to me that just north of town dirt, gravel and trash was swirling near him (credible source too). Nothing too excited to report from myself though.