March 14, 2024
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13 Hours - 416 Miles
An Unexpected Double Chase
Had a very interesting morning leading into the anticipated afternoon storm chase. I was awakened by the sound of the outdoor warning sirens going off. Checking radar, I noticed there was a tornado warning out to my west. A few minutes later, a second tornado warning. Then a third for three separate spots on an incoming line of storms.
Since the car was loaded with all of the gear, I immediately took off and headed east right out in front of the line. I had in view the southern most warning in the line as I drove east and decided to get across the Mississippi River into Illinois to position and watch it go by. Exited I-270 at Route 3 and found a spot to sit and watch the approaching kink in the line which prompted the warning.
I watched it come at me and pass just to my north. As it did so, I decided to move north under it and catch Poag Road to head east which was only a short distance away. As I was driving, I glanced out the passenger window to see the rain curtains wrapping in the farm field next to me. A second glance saw the rain curtains spinning hard on the ground in the field. I was in the middle of traffic approaching a stoplight and needed all my attention on driving, but I grabbed the camcorder and held it facing out of the passenger window without looking hoping to at least record what was happening. Took probably 45 seconds to navigate traffic and the traffic light, but once through, I was now heading east with the interesting part in front of me. I could see the rain curtains ahead of me, but never again saw any of the spinning like I observed in the field.
The chase ended shortly after that as the rain blocked the view and no hope of catching up.
Was excited to get back home to check the video to figure out what was happening in the field next to me. As I looked at the footage in the camcorder, I discovered that there was no footage from the field where the spin up took place. Turned out my no-look attempt to record what was going on failed as the record button on the camcorder did not engage, so I will never know what happened in that field or if it spun up enough to have been called a tornado.
The afternoon was expected to be the big show. The Severe Prediction Center issued a Slight Risk for our area with a 5% Tornado Risk.
My son Ryan and I left for our target at 11:00. We chose Perryville, Missouri as our target. We knew later in the day, a boundary would trigger storms in that area. We got to Perryville before storm initiation and had lunch. As storms began to fire, we made the decision to cross the Mississippi River and play the storms on the Illinois side. There were two areas of storms that were developing, so we moved northward to play in the middle of the two areas and as we tried to figure out which storm to target as it moved into Illinois.
As the storms continued to move east, both storms became tornado warned, but we made our decision to target the storm coming out of St. Charles County into St. Louis County Missouri as it looked better on radar and was dropping big hail. We moved to a very familiar area for us at the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary in West Alton, Missouri to watch the incoming storm.
Unfortunately, as the storm moved into view, it weakened and the tornado warning was dropped. At this point, we had to make a decision. Do we cut our loses and head home since we are so close, or attempt another intercept further away from the house? A brief discussion between Ryan and I led to targeting another intercept. We put our eyes back on two storms to our south that remained tornado warned.
We worked our way back down I-64 to get out in front of the storms and exited at the Nashville, Illinois exit. We drove south of Nashville and then waited as the back end of the storms approached. Once again, as they came to us, the storms weakened and the tornado warnings were dropped.
We decided to end our day and make the drive back home.
These were big storms in our area in the afternoon and were giant hail producers, up to baseball size in some places. We were not in position to experience or drive through any location with big hail on the ground. The biggest hail we drove through the entire day was only Nickel size. The day was a bit disappointing as we drove many miles for only storms that were in their dying stage as got to them. There were no reported tornadoes near where we chased.
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13 Hours - 416 Miles