July
29, 2024
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It is not often that we get a day in July where we can go on a storm chase with the potential of seeing a tornado, so my son Ryan and I took the opportunity to head out. The Storm Prediction Center issued an Slight Risk for Storms with a 5% Tornado Risk in Illinois to our east.
We left after Ryan got off of work and made our way east on Interstate 70 around 4:00pm. We set our initial target at Effingham, Illinois. We stopped at the Burger King in Effingham for a snack as we looked over the latest data. We decided to move a little further east on Interstate 70 to Highway 49. That gave us options for the storms that started to develop close to the Indiana / Illinois border, but also kept us out in front of the storm development taking place to the west.
It did not take long to realize the cells near the border were going nowhere while the storms back to our west exploded. A Tornado Warning was issued on the northern most cell in the developing storm complex to our west. That made our decision to move back west easy.
We set our goal in getting to the southern cell of that storm complex before it crossed the Interstate as it was showing good rotation on the backside as well.
We beat the cell crossing over the Interstate and at the Vandalia, Illinois exit, grabbed Highway 40 west to get into position to watch the rotation on the back side. We worked our way into the path of the rotation and stopped to watch. We were surprised to still see the storm showing some funnel clouds and lowerings.
We followed the lowering until the rain hid everything from sight. We moved back to Interstate 70. The last hint of daylight was now gone, but we set our sight on a new target. Just to the west of the first Tornado Warning and that first complex of storms, another cell ramps up and goes Tornado warned.
We traveled west on Interstate 70 once again and worked our way into position to view the rotation on the back side of the storm. Just as we neared our target, the Tornado Warning was dropped. There still remained some rotation on the back side, but as the suspected area of rotation came into view, we saw nothing in the darkness that grabbed our interest.
We encountered one last cell with a hook feature with a very small couplet on the tail end of the last storm, so we made one last effort to intercept.
Once again, we moved off of Interstate 70 to position for an intercept, but as it moved toward us, the rotation disappeared on radar as that area went by us. That put an end to our chase.
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6 Hours - 301 Miles