#ilwx

Wrigley in Winter. Last night over the Chicago River. Subzero temps are out of the picture, sort of speak, but lake effect snow could be challenge today along the Lake Michigan.

I’m exhausted. Simply put. Nearly 12 hours of driving today between 2 states. And I still managed to maintain a 6ft distance between my chase partner and I. (Probably because we were in separate cars.)

Anyway, about that weather...

While I do agree with the SPC for putting out that PDS warning, because it did pan out (somewhat), their tornado watch for this afternoon was a little over the top.

That’s a gigantic watch, probably the biggest I’ve ever seen. Three states covered all at once because there was potential. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t that much potential.

Diurnal heating wasn’t reduced due to ongoing convection throughout the day. That put a hamper on lapse rates until well into the late afternoon when skies finally cleared around 5pm.

Then, things started to happen. As I mentioned in my last post, we left Galesburg for Burlington about 30 minutes before a cell became tornado warned. While I’m bummed we weren’t on that storm, apparently every other chaser was so it would have been a clusterfuck had we not gone into Iowa.

It took a little while for things to ramp up, but when they did, we were there!

It started with this little storm that began to develop about 37 miles south of us. We started to head that way, back over into Illinois.

And then things went sideways. By that I mean my chase partner decided to core punch the storm so we could be on the western side of it (where you’re most likely to see a tornado). Now, he knows I hate core punching. An incident back in 2010 has given me PTSD with respect to core punching.

So, what is core punching? Basically, it’s when you drive through the heart of the storm, which is where your heaviest rain and hail occurs. I am so thankful we did this early on in the storm’s life cycle where it was just a little bit of heavy rain, and that’s it.

We stopped about a mile or two from the storm to take a look and make a visual inspection.

It was meh at this point in time. But it was strengthening rapidly unbeknownst to us. I pull up radar a few minutes later and this is what I see:

We’re basically smack dab in the middle of 3 developing cells. We’re surrounded by storms. So what does John decide? Let’s go back north and see what it does!

We core punch again. I’m 👌 that close to killing him. And then, it happens. My phone goes off, the radio goes off. TORNADO WARNING. I shit you not. In the span of about 15 minutes, this little storm went from a literal blip on the radar to producing a tornado.

I screenshot that well after the initial warning came through, but, yeah. We pretty much hit the jackpot. NOBODY was on this storm except for us. And we chased it. Holy fuck did we chase it!

I lost track of where we went on our quest to actually see the tornado, but then John put the final nail in his coffin: turning onto a wet dirt road. Just like core punching, wet dirt roads also give me PTSD flashbacks from chases past.

He was lucky he was in his car because I probably would have killed him.

We finally make it to a paved road and let me tell ya, we ended up running right along side that storm. I wish we’d stopped to take a few photos, but the situation was turning more dangerous by the minute.

Yep, dusk was upon us and we needed to haul ass to get northeast so we wouldn’t get caught up in the continuing tornadic activity.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

We plowed head first into it and by some miracle didn’t die? Somehow we managed to avoid the worst of it, but talk about white knuckle driving for at least 3 hours.

By the time we finally reached I88 (the highway home), my phone had gone off with 4 separate tornado warnings.

There was a point during this whole ordeal where I actually called my bestie for guidance because I was afraid we would get caught up in a secondary storm to our southwest that was also producing a tornado. Unfortunately, I have no more images after this because the drive home took us from highways to back roads back to highways.

Finally Friday. Today's start along the Chicago Lake Michigan shoreline.

📸 by @barrybutler9

Tulips at the Tower. The Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue thirteen years ago during spring on Flashback Friday.

The Chicago Christmas Tree in Millennium Park. Last night in downtown.

Lightning Smile. Brief storm on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Bolt near Sears Tower at 12:03am on Sunday in Chicago.

📸 by @barrybutler9

Wednesday Windy City Wake-Up. Sunrise today along the South Branch of the Chicago River.

📸 by @barrybutler9

Sunrise on Friday at the Church of the Holy Family in Chicago

📸 by @barrybutler9