Illinois Doesn’t Pull Through

20z SPC tornado outlook vs. tornado reports.

I dropped southeast through the Midwest today, after starting the morning in Minnesota, the target was once again northern Illinois. The area has been targeted many times this season, with some days ending up big and others flopping. Today was pretty much a bust, at least in Illinois. A few supercells formed in the afternoon, but storms just did not attain much low-level rotation. Despite a 10% hatched tornado probability  across much of the area, no tornadoes were reported in Illinois. A few tornadoes were reported that night in Indiana and it seems like this event got going just a little bit too late to take fuller advantage of the environment. There was considerable wind damage into the Ohio Valley and central Appalachians, and oh yeah, a seemingly random, but highly photogenic tornado in central Kansas.

Nonetheless, I did roam the rural east-central Illinois countryside to get some footage of the storms. Wind farms often lead to iconic photos during these types of events, so that was a an obvious choice for a target. I actually consider this one of my favorite photos from this year. The feel is quite ominous and it’s clear that the cloud bases are very low, seemingly below the tops of the wind turbines, based on the perspective:

As I drifted east toward the Indiana border and the sun set, of course that was when things started to get a little more interesting. I didn’t personally witness anything all that impressive, but the photo below shows that one storm near the central border between Illinois and Indiana was displaying a lowering in the cloud bases with some weak inflow. This didn’t really do anything, lifting a short time later, so that chase was over. I’m staying the night near Indianapolis before dropping south for a marginal chase opportunity tomorrow, probably in Kentucky, if not over the border into Tennessee.