Frasca Field Vintage Warbird Display

Heard Rudy Frasca was having a warbird display out at his privately owned Frasca Field Sunday afternoon and figured it would be worth checking out. I wish there had been more, myself, but it was a nice way to spend a beautiful day outside on a Sunday afternoon. His old SNJ and P-40 were all that flew, but beings how the P-40 has always been my favorite airplane of his, I wasn't complaining.


Rudy's Japanese Zero replica. Believe it is an old SNJ modified to look like the Zero.





Tia looking up at the FM2 Wildcat.





The P-40 in action.





The chilly couple... is it August?



Looking up at the P-40

Tornado, I guess.

ILX has released their survey results on their website.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ilx/?n=19aug09

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/ilx/events/19aug09/tornado-tracks.jpg

According to the survey, I did have a glimpse of the EF1 tornado that was on the ground for 20 minutes near Rochester.

Their survey puts the tornado on the ground at 3:17 PM CDT. The time stamp on this video capture is 3:20 PM CDT. Shot on the south side of Rochester.



Obviously that is contrast enhanced. Their track also puts the tornado right on my ass heading down Highway 29 out of Rochester. During the peak winds which reached 70-80 mph out of my southeast, I probably should have looked behind me.

Not sure what satisfaction this provides, as time could be off by a few minutes, and I still had a very rain obscured view. What is a tornado count anyway... but I have a hard time adding this one. Guess I should quit complaining. I was a stones throw from an EF1, and at least saw part of it, on the ground at the time or not.

More rain wrapped "fun"...

Tia and I saw the tornado that passed by Rochester -develop-. Emerged to see a blocky wall cloud to our west, turned around and already had a nice triangle funnel dipping out. The thing was a couple miles away and already wrapping in rain so contrast sucked but it was very apparent what was in there. It then wrapped in rain and quickly approached our location. I was quickly over taken by the wet RFD as the tornado caused damage probably a few hundred yards to one mile to my north. I knew it was close as the surface winds quickly shifted to out of the southeast and gusted to near 70 mph. I pulled off Highway 29 to pause for a moment as tree debris began going airborne.

6 *TORN 3 E ROCHESTER IL (11 SE SPI) 19/1423
ROOFS AND SIDING DAMAGED ON HOME...TREES ILX/LSR 3975 8949
DOWN...COUPLE TREES LIFTED INTO CORN FIELD


I should have quit there, as that was as good as it got for the day. I played the drop south game through the rest of the evening ending up along Interstate 70. Every storm looked promising on radar, but looked like absolute crap in person. They were all obviously outflow dominant and stood no chance. Even the storm far south near Vandalia which I thought surely had a shot given it's isolated nature south of the main complex, but it was nothing to write home about at all. The lessening of good directional shear the further south you got was likely part of the culprit. I stopped briefly to let the now linear complex overtake me in Effingham and was hit by a 5 minute window of 60 mph winds and some pea sized hail. Bleh. Hit I-57 and was back in Champaign by 8.



Tia, in disbelief we're chasing after more HP's.



Funnel cloud in there now, rapidly becoming wrapped in rain.



Not sure whether it was on the ground or not at this point, but it doesn't matter because my view was the same either way.



Random lightning shot that I actually captured about two weeks ago.

Eyeballing the west

Been a long time since I've updated the blog for a legit severe chance, so here goes. Complex scenario today with several MCS' and areas of cloud cover ruling the potential target area. Either way, very strong upper level system will continue to dig into the midwest spitting out impressive shear values. Where heating can occur, a decent shot at supercells will follow. Supercells are possible as far west as NE/KS but I won't be making that big a day out of this. It is still August, and I do have a lot to do this week. This is my only day "off" though, so I'll be watching locally.

I'll be watching the Interstate 72 corridor closely today. Shear will be a little stronger north of there, but this is where the best juxtaposition of cape and that shear will be located. Without going to far into detail, I'll just be spending the day keeping an eye on satellite imagery to see where the best pockets of heating occur. I'm feeling pretty good hunching on some clearing ahead of the system ejecting out of Missouri in a couple hours. I think it seems doable to see a few severe storms, potentially supercellular across central Illinois this evening, likely very near the I-74 and I-72 corridors.

This is not a day I'm so sure of that I'll be spending the entire day sitting in the target area waiting, but I won't sleep on it. Target area for storms should be reachable in a short time, anyway.

Chase Logs!

Well, after having only one done the entire year, I've managed to get the entire chase accounts section for 2009 finished. There's not a lot to see... but you can catch up on the horrid stories of 2009 here now.

http://prairiestormmedia.com/2009.html