May 30 2008 Western Illinois

Day one of many outflow boundary days across Illinois. I picked an initial target of Springfield and began heading west around the lunch hour for fear that things may go early. I grabbed lunch at a Subway in Rochester just east of Springfield and setup camp. Couple hours passed before the precip along the boundary began to transition into thunderstorms. A storm took off to my northwest and took aim on Lincoln. Another storm blew up near Jacksonville. I was vey much on the fence about which storm to go after. The Lincoln storm was closer, had a hook echo already and was passing through the stupid "hot zone" in that region so I went after it. Intercepting in Petersburg I could see a ground hugging base. I emerged out of the town right where the couplet would be passing but saw very little for the radar presence of that storm. No real area of interest, just a big black low rfb. I tried to keep up with the storm but ran into problems with road network and was soon behind it. As I intercepted Interstate 55 I flew south to intercept the supercells near Jacksonville. Ran into road construction in Springfield with 5 mph movement for much too long. Still managed to catch the beast near New Berlin. This thing had a beefy wall cloud, so I called it in to Ed Kieser up at WILL. This thing was also putting down insane cloud to ground lightning activity. No way I was getting out of my car for this. I attempted to keep up with this storm but ditched it as it headed into the Springfield area as I knew it'd be hard to keep up with over there. I saw one more supercell coming in around Winchester. It had a raging bow echo behind it, so I wasn't sure how long before it was ingested. Either way, it was my only play left so I whipped around at the next exit and back west I went on Interstate 72. Dropped south out of Alexander and was soon ahead of the rfb of the supercell, which somehow still had not been ingested by the bow echo. The couplet tightened and moved my way so I dropped south towards Franklin. I could see the wall cloud organizing but thought I had time to get through town. Well, several wrong turns later I was in the middle of town surrounded by building and tornadoes when I hear someone on the radio exclaim "tornado! tornado!". I was screwed. I emerged out of town in the hail core following two police officers but didn't stand a chance. The tornado was brief and would be done by the time I got out so I slammed on my breaks out of anger and pulled over. I was having data issues and was fed up and didn't care any more. I was hearing of new tornado warnings all around me and didn't like the situation I was in. Soon I saw Skip Talbot's van whiz past me and take a left so I pulled out quickly. I  followed him north 15 miles where we discussed the tornado and he showed me the photos he was lucky enough to grab. We grabbed some dinner in Springfield and called it a night.

First view of the initial supercell north of Petersburg. Just a big low base.

Digital still of the base.

Radar grab from the time of the above images.

Second supercell now near New Berlin, IL.

Radar grab of the third storm now near Alexander. Don't know how that thing stayed ahead of the bow echo long enough to produce a tornado, but it did.

Base of the storm looking southwest towards Franklin.

I could tell it wanted to do it, but could have sworn I'd have enough time to get through the stupid town. Didn't think the roads would be laid out all ridiculous like. What happened to good old square blocks?

Me and the two cops made a nice team, but we weren't going to get anywhere in the hail core so we all gave up eventually.