April 03, 2026    
(Click on images to enlarge them)

After the drive home last night, the Storm Prediction Center still had an enhanced risk across northern Missouri and southern Iowa, but looking at the morning weather data, we saw a warm front draped across west central Illinois which was grabbing our attention outside of the enhanced risk area.

After a discussion with my son Ryan, we decided tornado parameters were worth taking a trip up to West Central Illinois for a look. 

We headed north on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River around 11:00am.  Our target city was Beardstown, Illinois although that remained flexible as it depended on the placement of the warm front that was slowly moving northward.  We ended up stopping in Meredosia, Illinois and had lunch.  After lunch, nothing was note worthy weather wise, so we spent a bit of time searching for wildlife before our attention turned back to the storms.

We took note of the first severe warned storms up by Bloomington, Illinois.  We also noticed a cell up to our north 30 miles gaining intensity. Ryan and I went back and forth whether to commit to going after this cell or waiting for additional development south or west of where we were.  Catching this isolated cell on the warm front finally won out..

As we approached the storm, the weather service issued a severe thunderstorm warning and as it continued to gain intensity, followed by a tornado warning.

We caught up with the storm as it went through Havanna, Illinois.  The storm was growing into a beast as it continued to intensify.  We traveled along the south side of the storm just in front of the rotating base and had perfect views of what was happening.  We would occasionally stop out in front of the storm and watch it come right toward us and when it got to us again, we would move a bit further down the road to watch again.  The wall cloud was strongly rotating and there were funnel clouds and fingers that reached down constantly.






It seemed like only a matter of time before a tornado was imminent as we watched the wall cloud continue to rotate hard.  As we were driving once again and moving east of Delavan, Illinois, Ryan looks out the back window and shouts "Stop the Car! Stop the Car Now!  Tornado!"  Took a few seconds to find a suitable spot off the road and Ryan was jumping out before the car was stopped.  Out in the field behind us was a fully condensed Tornado.






The Tornado lasted less than a minute after Ryan spotted it.  By the time I got the car parked correctly, the Tornado had lifted. 

We continued to stair step our way through Central Illinois toward Bloomington, Illinois just ahead of the storm.  There were many attempts for the strongly rotating storm to put down a large Tornado, but condensing another follow up Tornado did not happen. 










As it approached Bloomington, we moved further out ahead of the storm to refuel.  We could see the storm was losing strength as it approached us.  We gave some thought to an intercept of a second storm intensifying with a Tornado Warning that was following the same path as this first one, but the amount of daylight left to get to the storm in time put an end to that plan.



This was a monster of a storm.  Incredible it only put down one brief Tornado.  Glad we were in a place to get a few seconds of video off of Ryan's camera. 
National Weather Service Storm Damage Survey


Log
Trip Log


12.5 Hours  -  404 Miles
Click on the link below to see video of some of these storms.
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