May 11, 2016 Left my house flying solo ahead of the first wave of storms and tried to position myself in the path of the big hail (under cover of course). I took I-270 all the way to I-55 in Troy, IL ahead and in the storm and all I got was plenty of strong wind, lots of heavy rain, and a few bangs of small hail. Turns out I could have sat in my lawn chair in the garage and saw the exact same thing. Was also one of the 30,000 people without power at home when I got back.
(Update: power back on after 22 hours without)
The second wave, Ryan and his girl friend, Jennifer Crutchfield, joined me to take a look at the storms. First we drove all the way out to the New Florence, MO exit on I-70 looking at each storm along the way and waiting to see if anything along the way showed signs of something better than average (like a tornado, huge hail). When we reached that tail end of the line of storms, rather than busting through the core to see how big the hail was, we opted to turn around and head back east and looked at all of the storms as we drove back in again. We kept noticing that the southern storms were the ones having the persistent minor rotation. Once we reached I-270, we headed south and eventually veered south on I-55. Got down to Route TT and hung out as the reports of the tornado on the ground came out on that storm directly west. Our intent was to watch the storm in front of the tornadic storm, see if it could spin up or produce nice hail, then see if the tornado would stay persistent as it approached us. About the time we settled in, we saw the outflow on radar kill the tornado. Still waited to see the size of the hail in the storm out in front of that storm. Drove through it purposely. Nothing bigger than around nickels. Had the dash camcorder going most of the trip, but since we didn't see anything spectacular, Haven't had the time or electricity to go through the footage to post pictures.
Total Miles: 291 Total Hours: 5.5
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