This chase started out on a whim. I had seen tornado warnings on cells in Illinois in the early evening, but didn't give them much thought. After I finished eating dinner, I gave the radar a quick glance and realized that there was a decent looking cell just west of Hoopeston. What made it even better was that it had reports of a tornado. I turned to my wife and said "do you want to go for a drive?" Ten minutes later we were heading west.
The tornado reports I had seen all suggested that it was rain-wrapped, and as we got closer to the cell, I had no doubt. The visibility got bad as we neared the storm. On several occasions, we tried to get within viewing range of the rotation, but each time the rain would cut us off. It took several attempts before we were finally able to find an intersection where we could stop and watch the storm. However, the frequent lightning forced us to remain in the Jeep.
After a few minutes, the rain picked up again and we re-positioned a bit further south. While the storm was quite pretty, there was no rotation in sight. By this time, the rotation was beginning to weaken and the daylight was waning, so after a few more minutes we called it a day. In order to remain out of the storm's way, we opted for a southerly return route, going through Attica and taking Indiana 28 eastward. The lightning was vivid, frequent, and close. By the time we reached Indiana 25 and the town of Odell, the lightning was making it impossible to see. We pulled over for a few minutes and then drove to the Purdue campus, where I spent the next 45 minutes trying to take pictures of the lightning. A few of them even turned out okay.
All told, it was a fun way to spend a few hours on a Monday evening. For the first time, Angie drove during the chase time, leaving me free to handle navigation and radar interpretation. She did a great job, and that arrangement worked much better for both of us. What didn't work so well was the continued light show that went on through most of the night, depriving us of sleep and leading to over 3.5" of rain. It does seem a fitting beginning to Lightning Safety Awareness Week, though.
back to the chase pageAll content contained herein is copyrighted by Ben Cotton unless stated otherwise. Use or reuse of this content is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License except as noted. For further details, please visit our legal page. This page last updated 06/23/10. This page made possible by systems from Unidata. Powered by Dryline Hosting.
