April 10 2008 - Payson Illinois

April 10 2008
Payson, Illinois

I went to be the night before thinking we had the chance for quite a tornado outbreak across the Iowa/Missouri/Illinois junction on the 10th. A very strong storm system was ejecting into the middle Mississippi Valley bringing in tons of moisture and insane shear profiles. What I woke up to the next morning was not at all what I had hoped to see.

A large rain shield had developed and was socking in the entire area with cloud cover, which has ruined many days already this year in the midwest. The day had gone from a near sure thing to marginal at best. I almost called the chase off right there in the morning but decided to watch and see how things evolved. By the lunch hour the cloud cover was actually slowly eroding over eastern Missouri. I was just about to give up for good, but this little glimmer of hope sat me at the computer for good. The sun was definitely out over my target area now so things were slowly trying to juice up. Shear was still fantastic so I slowly began rethinking heading out. I grabbed some lunch and continued sitting there refreshing the satellite image over and over.

By 3 PM a line of towers was going up along a boundary in eastern Missouri so I bit the bullet and headed out and flew down Interstate 72 towards Quincy. Before I reached Quincy there was already a developing area of severe thunderstorms across the river in Missouri. Two storms became dominant, so I went with the southern cell thinking it would kill off the initial cell to it's north. The northern storm soon went tornado warned, but I held steady and opted not to head northwest to intercept and continued down Interstate 72. Sadly, this storm did go on to produce at least a couple brief tornadoes in northeast Missouri before my storm eventually did kill it off.

I stopped near Payson as the base became to come into view to my west. I had a gorgeous supercell in my sights, finally. I chatted with Jarrod Cook briefly as he, Darin Kaiser and Scott Kampas were heading out the door in Peoria. I continued north a little bit on Highway 96 and paralleled my storm. A wall cloud quickly developed under the ragged base so my southwest. I thought surely I was in business and about 30 minutes away from tornado central with the shear profiles in this area. However, things went the opposite way. The cloud cover did not erode quick enough on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, so instability was about to fall like a rock for these supercells. I headed further down 96 towards Quincy as my storm began to fade from a gorgeous potentially tornadic supercell to a linear pile of mushy clouds. I stopped in Quincy when I realized the problem and decided my storm had no chance.

A new storm was going severe to my southwest, so I continued northeast to Highway 24 and cut east ahead of it. The storm had not much more hope than the original storm so I began to call off the chase. I had class at 8 am the next day so I had no desire to waste any more time. I headed east keeping an eye on the radar, but more or less set on going home. You hate to be going home an hour before sunset on a day with such potential, but the cloud cover really did us in or we'd have likely had a significant local tornado outbreak on our hands. The storms went fast and quickly supercellular, and even produced a few tornadoes very early in their lifespan in Missouri but just hit a brick wall in Illinois. Sigh. I grabbed dinner in Macomb and was back on my way, making a brief stop to chat with Skip Talbot and Chad Cowan in Havana. I hopped on Highway 136 and was home around 11:00 PM.

Initial view of the supercell near Payson Illinois at the Interstate 72 and Highway 96 junction.

Further down Highway 96. Things were about to peak right here. After this, the instability gradient was breached and things became linear and mushy instantly.

Linear! I paralled this guy for a while down Highway 24. The show was definitely over, all too soon.

New chase vehicle does not approve!