06/01/09 Chase

Ok,

Today I had two primary areas of interest and I was half way between both. Once I went out about 4:00 I fueled up the chase beast and reviewed the radar. At that time nothing was warned. I decided to head north because the cells over Rockford liked promising and the south part I was originally targeting had not lit up. Those storms were just crossing the Mississippi.

As I was heading north Ben Rock (Kane Co ARES) was calling hail at rt 47 and I-90. I was 30 minutes from there in rush hour traffic on Rt47. I took some video out the windshield as I was approaching Elburn. What I captured was an outflow boundary from earlier storms that were over Lake Co. Ill. It was sweet! By the time I found a spot to pull off it was almost on top of me. Got some pics. The outflow cooled things off dramatically!

About the same time I hear Ben calling out a slowly rotating wall cloud at the same location. I was still a bit away and even if I did not stop, I would have missed it due to the coin toss I made to head north or south.

About this time the storms coming off old Miss starting looking more organized. I loaded up Delorme and decided if I cut straight south, I could get to Ottawa in time. Definitely a nice drive!
I passed back under the outflow boundary on a dirt road and saved some gas with the tail wind it was generating.

About this time I noticed the storms I was after started taking a ESE direction which put them another 30 minutes south of Ottawa. As I got down to Ottawa I was able to intercept a small cell with some heavy rain but that was it. I think the outflow boundary started choking it out with the cold air.

On the way back home up Rt 71 I stopped for a couple of shots of the sun coming thru the clouds. It was a beautiful end to the day.

So my #1 chase rule, go with what will happen, not what is happening, if you are half way in between. My original spot I wanted to go to was about 75 miles south of me in Chenoa. This would have put me just south of the storms moving west to east. It probably would have given me some nice photo ops as the system was sagging south. I would have had a wait but probably would have had some great pics!

See outflow boundary portion of my chase video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQU0BXfPlbs