Isolated tors in the Land of Lincoln today?

Looking like a pseudo-surprise chase day today in central Illinois. Only a pseudo-surprise because I knew the potential was there, but it looked marginal at best until this morning. Even when I woke up this morning I was fairly negative, but as the day has progressed over just the last two hours I'm feeling much more optimistic about a couple supercells, and even a tornado report or two across west-central Illinois this afternoon. I've got a fairly board target right now, but since I'm in Champaign for the weekend, things will generally be moving this way so I can hang tight and let things unfold. Watching the Springfield to Litchfield area right now, which will eventually move towards the Decatur to Effingham area this evening.

Abundant sunshine and howling south winds right now... how long has it been since we had that on a potential chase day? RUC forecasts have plenty of 0-3 km cape all along the I-55 corridor from St. Louis to Springfield, and even perhaps as far north as Bloomington. Lapse rates in the low levels are very steep. Keep this sunshine going and we could get some low topped storms to erupt along Interstate 55 by around mid-afternoon. It would be nice if we could get surface winds to back to SE in advance of the wave, but I'll settle for southerly. Should be sufficient for at least a couple low topped supercells, and perhaps a tornado or two with the dominant storms.

I'll try to post as updates come along, but for right now I'm eyeballing leaving Champaign at 2 PM with a starting point of Springfield.