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.