along a warm front near Tuscola, IL
On April 17th, I began my first storm chase of 2013 as soon as I got off work around 3:00pm. Once off work I headed south from Peoria, IL on I-55 to get to my target-area outside Champaign, IL. The models the previous night were showing the warm front making it as far north as Peoria, IL, but early on in the day I realized that they were way off on its progress north. This was due to the models underestimating the cold pool left over from overnight convection north of the boundary. That meant I had to head farther south and eventually east to find any potential "magic" along the warm front by early evening. The area I was targeting along the warm front was characterized by nearly 2,000J/kg of CAPE to the south, 0-6km shear at 60kts, a supercell composite of (12), 0-3km SRH around 300m2/s2, and a moistening boundary-layer with dew points near 67°F. The main question would be could the cap be broken at this point. By evening, one storm did develop to my south along I-57 near Mattoon, IL and was pushing north. This looked like the only shot for something to cross the warm front so I stayed with this storm as it progressed north to my location near Tuscola, IL where I was sitting along the warm front. The storm did have some small hail, but really never got rooted on the warm front like I had hoped for. My best explanation for why this occurred is that the cold outflow from storms in northern Illinois kept pushing the warm front south much of the afternoon which allowed the front to undercut this storm before it could go crazy. Also weak convergence along the boundary didn't help as well. I shot a few photos of this thunderstorm for a brief time and then decided to head back home to chase very early the next day around dawn. Overall, though this was a good day to get back into the swing of storm chasing. I've added some photos I shot and some video below:
the warm front as I patiently wait...
and boy did it ever...
home to rest up for the next chase...
I've added a YouTube video from my GoPro's (above)
That's all for now. I'll be updating with Thursday's chase (April 18th) as well at some point as I'm in the process of getting caught-up on posts. Stay tuned for that in the coming days.
