This
was to be a decent outflow boundary day. A bow echo traversed the area
early in the morning and reinforced a warm front along the Interstate
72 corridor from Jacksonville to Champaign. A supercell would need to
root to the warm front to have a good chance at producing a tornado as
surface winds were from the southwest everywhere except along this
boundary where they backed strongly from the southeast.
Tia and I were in Jacksonville by around 3 or 4 PM where a supercell
had already initiated west of there and was tornado warned. However,
looking at surface obs I knew there was no point in intercepting this
guy. The storm was obviously on the wrong side of the front, on the
cool side and was ingesting 60 degree air. I decided it would be best
for us to just sit in Jacksonville and wait for something to develop
further south. Soon we were greeted by Mark Sefried and Darin Kaiser
who had toyed with the early supercell but agreed that this was not the
best play. Brad Emel later joined us there as well. We snacked and
gassed up, and shot the breeze for a while before we too were overtaken
by outflow and cold air as the supercell and boundary sagged southward
over us.
A new cell began showing some promised just to our southeast, so we
hopped back on Interstate 72 and got back into position. The details of
this supercell aren't worth hashing back over. It was generally the
same story over and over. It appeared to ride too far on the cool side
of the front and continued to lose the battle with it's outflow the
entire day. It would get areas of strong rotation that looked promising
but soon gust back out. We had one moment of fun east of Springfield,
while watching the best area of rotation approach and pass overhead, we
were slammed by rapidly shifting winds that kicked up dust and debris
for a moment. At this point we were also joined by Colin Davis and
Scott Kampas. We continued the chase down the Interstate 72 corridor
past Decatur and on towards home in Champaign County, all the while
this supercell showed an excellent radar appearance, but a cold
outflowy visual appearance. West of Champaign the whole gang decided to
head home, as this supercell began to take on a bow echo appearance as
many HP supercells tend to do at the end of their lifecycle. I was
already close to home, so as they took off back west for the
Peoria area I blasted east and intercepted the bow echo in Philo, IL.
The bow had even weakened, however and only splashed me with some heavy
rains.
A local chase was appreciated though, as I returned home on the same
tank of gas that I left home with and was able to make myself dinner in
my own kitchen.
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