northwest of Davenport, IA along I-80...
On May 28th, I started my two-week vacation with a quick local storm chase across eastern Iowa and west-central Illinois near Davenport, IA. This chase day didn't hold much hope for some tornadic supercells, but I thought I'd easily be able to grab a few good shots of some severe thunderstorms around sunset with a rather buoyant atmosphere in place. I targeted an area along an approaching cold front that was moving east toward the Mississippi River by mid-afternoon. This area near the Quad-Cites was characterized by 2,000J/kg of CAPE, 0-6km shear nearing 40kts, and a rather moist boundary-layer with dew points near 65°F. This chase day would later provide some spectacular photo opportunities! Sure gets a photographer in a good mood you could say. By 4:00PM, I headed north out of my hometown of Kewanee, IL along IL Rt. 78 and began heading west on I-80 outside Annawan, IL as convective initiation was beginning along the cold front near Iowa City, IA. I arrived along the famous I-80 truckstop around 5:00PM and began to get a good view of the developing convection. I headed back east from here as the convection was already overtaking me at this point and found an exit along I-80 just northwest of Davenport, IA to take in the rather photogenic convection. At this point, it was severe-warned and with the Dominator not to far behind me along I-80 it seemed this was the right storm to chase at this point. This storm really got its act together as it approached the Mississippi River and Moline, IL with several wind damage reports in that area. I followed this storm as it had some fairly nice structure as I stopped to get a few structure shots off the interstate near Colona, IL. At this time, the severe thunderstorm had a monster updraft/anvil that began to push off to my northeast. It also had some super-cellular characteristics, but quickly became outflow dominate and pushed out an outflow boundary into a rather unstable atmosphere to the south. I decided to let this storm go at this point hoping to get something even more intense to fire back off to the southwest along this outflow boundary. More severe storms did end up developing, but behind the outflow boundary to my dismay. Anyhow, I began to head south along I-74 and stopped again to take a few photos and video outside Orion, IL. A developing thunderstorm was becoming more organized at this time. This storm had some interesting characteristics with a nice well-defined wall cloud for a time. I shot some photos and some time-lapse video at this point and shot some more photos along U.S. 34 near a local wind farm and later headed back to my hometown of Kewanee, IL. As I arrived back home another thunderstorm began to develop and I was kind of chased by this one actually. I had a great-view of this storm however as the sun was beginning to set creating a rather picturesque sky along the Illinois landscape. I ended up calling it a chase at sunset and rested up for what I knew was a busy couple of weeks of traveling. I've added photos and time-lapse video from this local chase below:
A stout updraft accelerating into the
atmosphere with great contrast here!
Juicy CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy)
present as convective initiation begins!
present as convective initiation begins!
Severe thunderstorm approaching the Mississippi River...
Some interesting structure on this severe
thunderstorm outside Colona, IL...
into west-central Illinois!
Explosive convection at this point...
Severe-warned thunderstorm now crossing the
Mississippi River, but becoming outflow dominate...
Outflow boundary (above) showing
quite an unstable atmosphere in place
Pretty cool shot with my chase vehicle and some
sun rays peaking through the developing convection!
Robust convection...
(Canon 70-300mm telephoto-zoom lens)
Another shot of the outflow boundary "hanging around"
to my southeast...
Yet another shot of the outflow boundary
that pushed out of these storms nearly overhead...
A rather photogenic view in the western horizon...
Close-up shot of the well-defined wall cloud!
A great shot of the outflow boundary with warm-air rising
along this newly formed boundary...
Another angle of the lowering-base here!
One more close-up as this storm was pulling in some
juicy-air at this point...
A nice downdraft here moving overhead as
I drop farther south along I-74...
This one may be getting canvassed...
Absolutely beautiful!
More convection approaching from the southwest!
Another picturesque wide-angle shot!
Hard to choose which one of these are going to be on
my wall in my apartment soon...
Umm...yeah what a beautiful storm along
One more of the beautiful sunset!
The thunderstorms depart leaving behind
mammatus at dusk back home...
I've added a YouTube time-lapse (above)
I've added a GoPro video (above)
This ended up being quite a rewarding chase since it provided lots of good photos from another marginal chase setup. That's why it's always nice to chase any storm you can since you just don't know what you'll see through your view-finder and your camera's lens. I will be posting many posts over the next couple of weeks as I have lots of photos and video to go through from the past few weeks of chasing and traveling across the Great Plains. More to come! Stay tuned.
