Seeing
the potential for supercells
within a leisurely drive from
the house, the decision was made
to give these storms a
chase. My son, Ryan,
decided not to chase due to his
work schedule, so I put out a
chase invitation through my St.
Louis chaser friends and Tyler
Schlitt took me up on the
invitation to join me.
We
met at 9:30am at my house and
set out for our initial target
of Mount Vernon, Illinois to
grab potential supercellular
storms between Mount Vernon and
Evansville, Indiana around
2:00pm. Stopped for lunch
at Mount Vernon and after data
and conversations, we reset our
target city to Evansville,
Indiana. As we looped
around the Evansville, we
decided to cross the Ohio River
and watch from the Kentucky
side. Filled up the gas
tank and watched as a string
cells went up just to our south
and east.
Worked
our way south checking a few of
the cells. We could also
see on the radar multiple cells
going up in southeast Missouri
and southern Illinois. We
also figured into the mix that a
tornado watch box was to our
east along with a 10% hatched
tornado area. Decision,
decisions. As we watched,
the cells to the west didn't
appear to be growing, the string
of cells we were looking at just
to our east looked good
visually, but were not showing
tornadic promise either as they
flew by us at 55mph. Then
there was more convection
further east. We made the
decision to move east into what
appeared to be the better
tornado environment.
We
moved east toward Owensboro,
Kentucky. Then worked our
way south into central Kentucky,
then east toward Elizabethtown,
Kentucky. We stopped again
short of Elizabethtown and
continued to watch for signs of
cells going severe or cells with
rotation, a cell finally went up
in front of us that became
tornado warned heading for
Elizabethtown. As we
came up from behind the storm,
we went through the hail path
which appeared to have dumped
1.25"-1.50" hail. We did
not stop for pictures, but just
continued on. That cell
weakened. Latched onto
another cell and again another
hail path with slightly smaller
stones. Still nothing
appeared to be taking off, so
rather than continuing to follow
these storms further east and
making a longer return trip, we
gave the chase up.
Backtracked back to the
interstate to begin a long trek
home and took some pictures of
the remaining hail left on the
road.
On
the trip home, there continued to
be minor cells that continued to
form. Nothing severe, but
made for some good photo
opportunities in the diminishing
light.
This
trip certainly
ended
differently
than we had
envisioned it
from the
beginning with
it becoming a
4 state, long
trip. On
a
side note, during the drive
through Kentucky, we found out
that the word "Parkway" is
just another name for what we
know in the plains as a
"Turnpike". Exits were
rare and were never available
when you wanted to change
directions. Contrary to
my original belief, I was very
surprised that in the northern
part of Kentucky that we drove
through, there were plenty of
places with a good line of
vision to clearly see
storms. I will have no
reservations to chase there
again someday. Had a
very enjoyable time with Tyler
as my chase partner.
15
Hours
- 641
Miles
|
Click
on the link below to see video of some of
these storms.
|
April 05, 2017 
