Chase turned to spotting today.

I started out going after a well developed discrete cell heading towards Morris. Just as I was getting on 55 it fell apart. I had Kane Co ARES plugged into the scanner and heard Ben advise his location to the net so I figured I would head up there.

We watched as the system moved our way. The velocity showed some broad rotation but really nothing significant. The system turned more linear as it approached. Did catch a few good pic of a couple of cells building just to our west. At one point we had a ring of mammatus around us so we were directly under the anvil!

We were able to watch a couple of shelf clouds build up. This was interesting to me since I had not seen the genesis of a shelf cloud before! There were no obvious outflow boundaries from this system. Just one great mass of nothing but disorganized storms. Oh how I wished for some discrete cells but this would not happen.

Once the gust front moved thru the winds picked up. I believe we measured around 40mph at our location but there were several reports of 60 mph + to the east of us.

ARES net called our attention to some tighter rotation just to the north of us and we moved off to investigate. I was marked with some nice white scud in a broad ring but really no significant features. After this we broke off and bugged out since there was very little organization to the west.

All in all a bit of a bust but at least we tasted some action! Thanks Ben and Mike for letting me join in. I really do need to get my ticket and a rig so I can join the net!

Looking for the broken cap...

Well, today was a bust. It appeared all the right ingredients were put into place for some good ole down home MCS to move on in and rip up the landscape but as luck would have it, the cap did not break.

Nothing but sun for us, except for a brief clouding over before sunset. Meanwhile Iowa and Wisconsin is having fun fun tonight with some nocturnal MCS complexes.

So the chase beast lies in wait for the opportunity to go on a real storm hunt adventure. Cameras are ready to go as we wait for the afternoon to cook the upper levels and break the cap. I would really love to video the genesis of a discrete cell forming and dying. If it decides to spit out a tornado or two, great! Hopefully it just does it in the rural areas!

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