Convection begins to fire along a warm front in west-central Illinois south of Monmouth, IL
On April 28th, I decided to chase a local warm front play across northeast Missouri and west-central Illinois. This day never lived up to expectations in this area, but it certainly did down in the Deep South seen here. My target near Macomb, IL featured by afternoon 1,500J/kg of CAPE, 0-6km shear at 40kts, and a moistening boundary-layer with dew points climbing to 60°F. It was quite a dynamic system and tornado potential along the triple point and warm front looked possible by early afternoon as fog and morning rain cleared the area allowing for daytime heating. By early afternoon, convection began to erupt along the cold front and warm front. Once the storms developed they struggled to get organized and latch onto the warm front to my disappointment. The storms were nothing more than multicell blobs and rather uninteresting. I ended up sitting just north of Macomb, IL off U.S. 67 for a good hour or two. After realizing it just wasn't gonna happen in this area I decided to drive back to Kewanee, IL. Later in the evening some storms along the cold front near St. Louis, MO moved into central Illinois and quickly organized into a squall line with an embedded supercell. Grr...that was my only regret on this day is that I gave up too early and should of drove south to grab a few shots of that. Oh well, the big story was in the Deep South and the tornado outbreak that occurred in that area. I've added just a couple shots of the multicell convection on this day below:
Towering cumulus along IL Rt. 78 near Laura, IL
Convection trying to develop along the warm front...
Same photo as the sun is being obscured by a cloud of some wannabee updrafts (looking west)
The best photos I shot were early on as convection began to develop...it just wasn't my day!
That wraps up this brief storm chase. I ended up chasing locally on May 8th at a local wind farm outside Galva, IL as well. I'll be posting that shortly.
