After looking at
weather data in the morning, talking with my son
Ryan, then getting input from Brian Stertz, we
determined the setup was just not worthy of a
tornado chase. So Ryan goes ahead with his
plans to snake hunt and I go ahead with my plans
to have dinner with my wife and the next door
neighbors.
Fast
forward to 4:30pm as I'm sitting having dinner
with the neighbors and my wife at a restaurant
in Kirkwood, Ryan calls me debating
whether the setup has now changed enough to
chase. Storms were displaying hooks and
velocity signatures which caught his
attention. After conversations with Brian
and I, he was convinced to leave snake hunting
and now hunt storms. I wasn't so quick
since I had driven my wife and neighbors to the
restaurant and we had already ordered
food. Not much I could do, right?
Well, the food came and we were finished with
dinner just about the time Ryan was heading to
the storm south bound on I-270 near where I was
at. Long story short, I rudely skipped out
on the neighbors and my wife and found myself in
Ryan's car heading for the storms.
Since I had not planned on chasing, I was
working with only what I had in my car: a
scanner, a camcorder, and a cell phone instead
of the usual arsenal of equipment. Knew I
would especially miss that window mounted
camcorder (of which I did).
With a
late start, storms had already fired and the
first tornado warning had been issued. We
set our sites on the intercept as it would cross
I-55 at Bloomsdale, MO. We were a half
hour away from this spot, but the storm was 45
minutes giving us plenty time to get in
position. Found the open view to the west
when we arrived at the Bloomsdale exit and could
clearly see the storm coming. A nice,
rotating wall cloud, but with rain wrapping
around it.
As we watched it
approach, we noticed a bit of a southeast turn
in the storm, so we got back on the highway
and moved south. Being very familiar
with roads in this area, we knew the exit at
"O" would have zero view, so we moved to the
next exit, "32". This was now too far
south, but knew we'd have a good view out the
windshield as we hooked back north.
Unfortunately, the business part of the storm
was now completely wrapped in rain. We
exited at "O" as the hook area went by.
Big hail (1.50") was being pulled around the
back side of the circulation, so we took cover
under the I-55 bridge on "O".
As the
hail and winds let up, we took
"O" up the hill to Highway
61. Just to the
south of "O", 61 turns due east,
so we hung tight to the area of
circulation without getting too
close in hope of not being
belted with hail again.
Eventually, we were able to
break free of the hail and most
of the rain to get a clean look
at the area of interest.
We then worked our way toward
St. Genevieve. We continued east, then
south on 61, then onto Route "H" that took us
over to Highway 51 and the Chester, IL
bridge. Before crossing the bridge, we
pulled over in the river valley to get a view
of a new, developing wall cloud off in the
distance to the Northeast.
As the storm
continued to move east, we crossed the bridge
and continued northeast on Route 150. We
crossed the storm's path and saw a lot of hail
deposited on the ground, now only 1/2" to
3/4". Daylight had now faded to night
and we gave up the hunt west of Steeleville,
IL. Heading home, we were treated to the
nighttime lightning display from the line
coming in from the west.
5.5
Hours
-
196 Miles
|
Click
on the link below to see video of some of
these storms.
|
March 24, 2019 
