April 25 2008 Western Illinois

Two targets were to be setup today. One was in eastern Iowa and northern Illinois into southern Wisconsin. The other, further south in western Illinois. The northern target offered the shear, and the southern offered the instability as is usually the case with those split setups. I opted for the southern target, with more intstability. Instability is what burned me on the 10th so I wanted to maximize that this time. The down side of each target wound up occuring. The northern target with all of it's shear and no instability wound up with mushy "supercells" while the southern target with it's instability and no directional shear wound up with strong, but linear severe storms. I left around 2:00 PM and headed down Highway 136, ending near Lewistown where I sat and waited for a storm to take over. It was clear early on I had no choice but to play with the linear segments. One had gone pretty intense and would allow me to intercept it near Rushville, so I flew southward in that direction. I made my first intercept north of Virginia, Illinois. As one would expect, the line overtook me and I got blown around by some semi-severe winds for about 5 minutes and it was all over. Bummed that this might be my highlight of the day I continued back down Highway 125 towards Springfield. Entering the west side of Springfield I plotted my course towards Interstate 72, but happened to notice a new cell exploding to my southwest. This cell was slightly more discrete so I detoured west towards Berlin. The cell came into view and certainly looked mean with it's ground scraping base. It was obviously outflow dominant, so I knew tornadoes weren't an option for me so I plotted another core intercept. The core rolled me  and was certainly more intense than the previous line. Winds were sustained around severe levels at 60 mph for several minutes, with dime sized hail. I reported 60 mph winds and dime sized hail to ILX. The Springfield airport about 5 miles away confirmed my report with a measured gust of 60 mph exactly of their own. After the intercept I made my way back through Springfield, dealing with construction of all kinds before eventually reaching Interstate 72, only to see a pink polygon around my storm showing a Tornado Warning. The storm was bowing out, so it was likely just a quick flare up of rotation in the northern end of the bow. No less though, I wanted back ahead of the line so I punched it from the back end on Interstate 72 and emerged again in western Sangamon County. From that point on I simply stayed ahead of the line, stopping every little bit to attempt some lightning shots. Unfortunately a lot of the lightning was embedded inside the rain so I wasn't able to capture more than a few shots that showed the actual bolt. For video of the two cores, click here.

Second storm near Farmingdale. Obviously could not be anymore outflow dominant.

First lightning shots near Monticello Illinois. The last few shots were taken at this same location.