August 19 2009

August 19 2009
Rochester, Illinois

Tia and I saw the tornado that passed by Rochester -develop-. Emerged to see a blocky wall cloud to our west, turned around and already had a nice triangle funnel dipping out. The thing was a couple miles away and already wrapping in rain so contrast sucked but it was very apparent what was in there. It then wrapped in rain and quickly approached our location. I was quickly over taken by the wet RFD as the tornado caused damage probably a few hundred yards to one mile to my north. I knew it was close as the surface winds quickly shifted to out of the southeast and gusted to near 70 mph. I pulled off Highway 29 to pause for a moment as tree debris began going airborne.

6 *TORN 3 E ROCHESTER IL (11 SE SPI) 19/1423
ROOFS AND SIDING DAMAGED ON HOME...TREES ILX/LSR 3975 8949
DOWN...COUPLE TREES LIFTED INTO CORN FIELD

I should have quit there, as that was as good as it got for the day. I played the drop south game through the rest of the evening ending up along Interstate 70. Every storm looked promising on radar, but looked like absolute crap in person. They were all obviously outflow dominant and stood no chance. Even the storm far south near Vandalia which I thought surely had a shot given it's isolated nature south of the main complex, but it was nothing to write home about at all. The lessening of good directional shear the further south you got was likely part of the culprit. I stopped briefly to let the now linear complex overtake me in Effingham and was hit by a 5 minute window of 60 mph winds and some pea sized hail. Bleh. Hit I-57 and was back in Champaign by 8.

Video of the rain wrapped tornado near Rochester, IL.

Tia, in disbelief we're chasing after more HP supercells!

Contrast enhanced video capture of the funnel cloud developing south of Springfield heading towards Rochester.

No question what is in there, just unfortunate I didn't even have this good a view once it became a fairly wide tornado.

Still photo of the HP supercell now, with the tornado fully developed but also fully hidden by the rain wrapping in from the south. Another spotter/chaser looking at the storm from the north had a clear view of a fairly large tornado right now. GRR!

Precip core of the HP beast coming at me.

I am actually driving directly into the tornado at this time. I was not intentionally core punching the tornado, but rather had to back track back to my SE moving HWY. In an attempt to view the tornado, I had abandoned my best escape route and was now high tailing it back thru Rochester. I also was not aware that anything had come of the funnel cloud I had seen earlier, thus unaware that a large tornado loomed ahead in the rain core.

In Rochester now. The FFD of the supercell is approaching to the right, visible over the tree tops. The large tornado was now wrapped in there, likely just to my right behind the trees.

The tornado is now crossing the highway behind me, doing damage to a farm. I'm starting to get the idea, finally... The surface winds go from steady out of the SW to very strong out of the SE at the tornado cyclone encompasses us on the highway and tree debris becomes airborne. I pull the car off the highway briefly to avoid being blown off the road, but then decide my best option is to continue southeast out of the tornadoes path. I still had no visual confirmation that a tornado was in progress, but now was fairly confident one was in there. It wasn't until later that I saw the damage reports that I could confirm what I witnessed.

Playing the "drop south" game along the string of pearls of supercells. Most had been fairly unimpressive. This one looked a lot better on radar near Vandalia so we dropped that way near Interstate 70.

Getting closer now, not so impressive. Another outflow dominant HP supercell. It was at this point that I decided the day was over.

Not before a straight line wind driven car wash in Effingham, IL.

Radar image showing the "kink" near Rochester where the tornado was bring produced.

Velocity image showing the couplet nearing Rochester around the time I was filming the funnel cloud. Note the circulation north, where an even stronger tornado was taking aim on Williamsville. Both images are from the NWS ILX event page on the August 19th outbreak, which can be found here.