After
the chase yesterday and the long night of helping my
chase partner get settled after his tragic,
life-changing night followed by the long drive back
home, my son Ryan and I were up early again in
preparation for an Illinois chase opportunity. There
was a very small chance of tornadic cells forecasted.
Before storms were
to initiate, we both attended the local American
Meteorology Society field trip to the Alton, Illinois
Lock and Dam for a tour.
When
the tour ended, and we headed up I-55 toward
Springfield, Illinois. As we were heading north,
we were eyeing some on-going storms just to the north
of Springfield heading northeast. We made an
attempt at catching these storms, but as we reached
Springfield, we realized these storms were moving too
quick and catching them was not a feasible
option. We dropped back down south and pulled
into a rest area to re-evaluate. The decision
was to just hang out in the area and see if any storms
developed.
It wasn't long and
a storm developed to our southwest. We made the
move to line ourselves up with the storm coming at us.
We
maneuvered our way northeastward through the back
country roads following the storm, but the intensity
never ramped up to the point of becoming severe.
We eventually let the storm go and headed back to I-55
again.
Now there were more
storms forming to the west of the highway.
One
of the storms in the line finally became severe
warned, but we never saw any severe parameters as each
cell passed right in front of us. As the last
cell passed us to the east, we headed home. We
got one last surprise on the back side of the last
cell with a rainbow to end the day.
April 30, 2022 
