I played western Illinois as well. I sat around Havana hoping that storms forming in western Illinois would remain discrete. However obviously with the strong forcing of the cold front that wasn't going to happen. I figured this would be the only game so I got out ahead of the line in Schuyler county and intercepted south of Havana near Virginia.
Then had more or less given up the chase but decided to get back ahead of the storms to I took 67 (i believe?) southeast towards Springfield. I noticed a storm making it's way towards Springfield that had begun to flare up so rather than hitting 72 back home I detoured west towards Farmingdale. This cell was more discrete, but still obviously outflow dominant so I planned another wind intercept. Got to break in the new car with it's first hail stones, only around dime sized. Winds this time certainly reached severe levels so I figured the NWS could use some confirmation on their warnings and submitted a report of 60 mph winds and dime sized hail, which the SPI airport confirmed with their own 60 mph measured gust.
After this I made my way south through Springfield dealing with construction as I made my way back towards 72. Sure enough, the storm goes tornado warned near Lincoln, but was obviously just a quick spin up in rotation in the north end of the bowing storm. Either way, I wanted to have some more fun so I punched back through the ass end of the bow echo on 72 and was quickly back ahead. From then on I kept stopping for lightning photos and and then getting back ahead of it back to Champaign.
Actually stopped right by the Champaign airport and let the gust front hit me again where a 67 mph gust was measured about 200 yards away from where I was sitting. For whatever reason, I didn't really notice the severity of the winds this time. Was a good deal of tree damage on the south end of Champaign once I got back in town.
Anyway... here's a short video clip with terrible compression and some photos I took. The first being the Springfield storm, and the rest obviously lightning photos between Decatur and Champaign.
Fun day I suppose after I initially thought it would be a total bust, but am ready for some discrete supercells.
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2 comments:
Those photos are incredible..really taken from. To see those kind of wall clouds are awesome to look at..Cool photos!!
dude awesome shot with the one single bolt of lightning
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