The
first storm chase of the year and the
likelihood of it being a nighttime
chase was less than ideal. Ryan
and I decided that we would try it
anyway and just stay at a safe
distance from any dangerous
storm. With Ryan working until
2:00pm, we would have plenty time to
determine where our intercept point
would be with any storm that
developed. All of the weather
models were saying there would be
storms around St. Louis and would
initiate sometime between 5:00pm to
8:00pm. Image to my surprise
when a storm breaks out in south
central Missouri just after 1:00pm and
tracks toward the Mississippi
River. I sent a text to Ryan and
told him not to waste any time after
work as we had a storm that had
already developed. By 2:30pm we
were on the road.
After weighing the options, we chose
to play the storm on Illinois side of
the river. We wrapped around the
east side of St. Louis and grabbed
highway 3 south. We chose to
play a road in the river valley called
Bluff Road as we were familiar with
that road and would have a great view
of the storm coming at us from the
Missouri side of the river over the
big river valley. We eventually
ended up at Prairie Du Rocher as our
viewing point.
The storm looked good structurally,
and at one point had a decent wall
cloud, but it never did really take
off. The surface winds as we sat
were less than 5mph. We watched
it go by and watched a couple of
smaller cells go by that were behind
the first cell, all with little or no
velocity.
We eventually decided to backtrack to
Route 3 again and we played the back
and forth game, north, then south,
then back north. We'd watch the
storms and we'd start to see a bit of
rotation and move toward the storm and
then the rotation would go away.
By now, daylight had vanished and we
were now moving around in
darkness. We saw a storm up by
Ruma, IL that seemed to be a bit
stronger than the others, so we moved
up to the edge of that storm to watch
it go by. Oops, a bit too close
as we heard BANG. Then more
bangs. Went from nothing to
hailing golfballs in a couple
seconds. A quick exit back south
as we got pelted with golfballs.
Counted about 12 dents in the car
today.
After
a phone conversation with Brian
Stertz, we decided to target a storm
that was coming toward Perryville,
MO. We had plenty of time, so we
contemplated either staying on the
Illinois Side of the River and
watching the storm from the River
Valley, or crossing the River back
into Missouri and watching the storm
come into Perryville, MO. After
a lot of discussion on the way, the
positives of the Missouri side won out
and we worked our way back to
I-55. We stopped again in
Perryville to check the approaching
storm out and parked next to Chris
Higgins in the McDonalds Parking Lot
and said "Hi".
After checking our data again, we
decided the path of the storm may be
too close at the Perryville exit, so
we moved south to the next exit and
positioned ourselves facing
north. After a few minutes, we
decided we were a bit too far south,
so we worked our way back
northward. As we approached the
Perryville exit again, we began seeing
many power flashes just to the left of
the highway north of the Perryville
exit. We attempted a few
pictures and then back in the
car. We exited the Highway at
the Perryville exit again and made the
choice to follow the storm northeast
on Highway 51. We knew the path
of the storm would cross this Highway,
so we remained cautious as we moved up
to the tornado as we monitored the
power flashes. The tornado
crossed the Highway in front of us
knocking down power lines and
destroying a house blowing the debris
across the road ending any forward
progress.
There
were several other vehicles that were
caught right behind the tornado
crossing. We were told the
occupant of the house was OK. We
saw our friend Tyler Schlitt pull up
and provide some assistance during the
first few minutes before police
arrived. Meanwhile, Ryan jumped
out of the car and climbed the hill
next to the road to get a view of the
departing tornado. I joined him
and we watched the wedge tornado
continue on its way over the river
into Illinois with each lightning
stroke. Unfortunately,
with our dash camcorder, handheld
camcorder, and our camera, we were
never able to grab another clear photo
of the tornado as it departed in the
distant darkness, even with that
occasional lightning.
As
the emergency personnel began
arriving, we decided to leave the area
before we were trapped by the
vehicles. As we retreated and
worked our way back to I-55 for the
ride back home, we branched off to
access the roads north off of Highway
51. Every one of the roads ended
up being blocked off due to emergency
vehicles and damage, so we were forced
to turn around. We got back on
I-55 north and found ourselves in
another road block as the Highway was
blocked due to debris and overturned
cars and trucks. Eventually,
they got the road clear enough to let
the cars clear as they emptied the
highway on the now closed highway so
the massive clean up could
begin. This is the location of
the one death from this tornado.
9 Hours
* Total Miles - 324
|
Click
on the link below to see video of some
of these storms.
|
February 28, 2017 
