Summary:

Intercepted a tornado warned storm near New Liberty IA, once this storm was dying we headed back east to Rock Falls, IL where we would wait at a McDonalds for something new to develop or just let the squall line overtake us and mess with the hail. This is becoming a good idea in my books because we did the same thing back on 10-18-07 and it ended up working in our favor. This time we got a funnel cloud in Rock Falls, IL. Food and chasing, gotta love it! Once that storm died we messed with the outflowish stuff on the way home with blinding rains, dinky hail, awesome lightning strikes, and decent shelf cloud structures.

It was nice to be able to see daytime structure again, up until now during this season everything happened at night. Observing stuff in between split second lightning flashes insn't nearly as climactic. It was very nice to be reminded storms do happen in the day, and another win as far as my forecasting goes and my non-likeliness to let a grim SPC outlook deter me.

Tornadoes: 0

Detailed account:

A finicky, local setup left me taking a half day of work. I had a preliminary target of I-88 and I-39 near the Dekalb oasis. A conditional setup if ever there was one, the dynamics were there, though not incredibly strong. The moisture was there, but the upper level wind pattern and position of the low pressure system would only allow a small window of time for something to develop and the biggest wild card was if we could get the clearing needed.

Low and behold [as I told people it would since the trough was taking on a negative tilt!] a mid level dry punch came in and vaporized much of the morning crapvection. This helped clear the skies. Chasers suddenly rethought their plans and SPC upped the probabilities on their outlooks.

Got stuck behind the short bus!

Beastly looking supercells were now in southern IA, tornado warnings were going up, we were near the border at this time racing to catch them, we wanted to get into a position near the highway. As on time as we were we were still a bit late. We stopped at the Iowa-80 truck stop to gas up and ponder our move. There I could see the approaching storm:

Son of a...its an HP monster as is typical around here. Not visually friendly and the most dangerous storms to try and intercept. So we plot the point of interception, and blast towards New Liberty, IA about 15 mins away from where the truck stop was. I love dirt Iowa roads, they're fun when dry but not fun when wet. There we observed the storm but Matt and his buddy didn't want to get closer. Next time I'm over-riding their decision [maybe I have a sub conscious death wish but in my opinion we could have been closer.]

The challenge in the rolling hills of Iowa is to find the highest hill with the best visibility. Here you can see a lowering and the RFD notch/clear slot coming in behind it. This storm was tornado warned, and a tornado had been reported.

Something tells me my camera was on bar/party mode instead of chase mode. Ugh.

Nice lowering, most likely the wall cloud, but could be a leftover funnel. We are too far.

Well it was obvious we had caught the storm at the end of its tornadic life style. Todays setup didnt promote long lived supercells and since the cap totally eroded, there was convection everywhere. The radar was a giant mess of storms, not the ideal chase setup since the best storms need to be in their own environment. Storms need their own supply of moisture and when theres too many, they compete with each other and often times nobody wins and if one does, it is often very brief.

We decided our next move would be to head back east/home. I tossed out the idea to stop for food and A- wait for new possible development or B- let the line overtake us and we could measure wind/hail [just like 10-18.] So we decided to stop in Rock Falls, IL based off radar. We stopped and ate at the local McDonalds, chatted with the locals which I always enjoy.

We're watching a cell approaching our location on radar when suddenly the people become restless and are looking outside. Nothing more than a mean looking storm rolling in so we observe it.

After much discussion we do believe this to be a funnel and given the HP characteristics of the cell, this is exactly how it would look. You can see it better in Danny's pic.

So we quickly jump back on the chase and get behind the storm, which had a very nice base and put down some very suggestive lowerings. One could be a wall cloud but I didn't notice rotation. There does appear to be a weak RFD notch as well.

We followed this storm for about 20 minutes, but the road network along the rock river was tricky, and the storm was moving quickly. Eventually it appeared to weaken on radar so we ditched it. There were storms all over the place, so we would just sample them all on our way home. At least we got treated to some decent shelf structure on an outflow-ish non-severe storm.

Their outlook in the morning...