November 10, 2002
Eastern Indiana/Western Ohio

        I returned from my girlfriend's apartment around noon on November 10.  Storms were just beginning to move into the Lafayette area, and I checked out the radar to see how things looked.  This radar image from 1730Z shows the line as it begins moving into Indiana.

        Since it was the middle of November, I was rather intrigued by this line of storms.  A quick check of the Storm Prediction Center website showed that three counties in east central Illinois were under a tornado warning.  After consulting briefly with my colleagues, Joe Nield, Mike Kruze, Justin Koby and I set forth in Mike's car to get some pictures of the event.  Melanie Maslo (the aforementioned girlfriend) and Joel Heck stayed behind to watch radar for us.  Deciding we needed to get ahead of the line, we headed east on State Road 28.  The line was already ahead of us at the time, and we spend a good hour or more getting through it.  The worst part was when we were in the town of West Elwood.  We ended up in the hail shaft (dime sized hail) and then directly under a mesocyclone which we believe may have been the source of the Hartford City and/or Van Wert tornadoes.  We reported the hail to NWSFO IND and Mel nowcasted us out of danger.  Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of the hail as we were rather busy making sure we didn't die.

        Shortly afterwards, we got ahead of the line and stopped northwest of Muncie to take pictures.  The gust front was very beautiful and dynamic, at times looking very ominous.  (photos by Mike Kruze)

We realize that we might want to consider moving again when a page from Mike's road atlas was ripped by the wind.  Here Joe (background) and I try to put it back together as Justin (foreground) watches the clouds in awe.  The decision was hastened when I saw what looked too much like a rotating wall cloud for our comfort. (photos by Mike Kruze)

        Some nice stratus fractus came into view and we pulled over again.  Right after the second picture was taken, the rain caught up to us again.  The boundary between precipitation and no precipitation was so abrupt that you could actually see it on the road.  (left photo by Mike Kruze, right photo by Justin Koby)

        Finally, we ended up in Union City, on the Indiana-Ohio border.  The storms were falling apart, and daylight was running out.  We snapped one final shot of the storms and then took a quick picture of a developing updraft tower to our north.  (photos by Mike Kruze)

        All in all, it was a fairly successful chase, considering we had no preplanning.  We had nothing tornadic, but some beautiful clouds and nice hail.  The storms did produce tornadoes not too far from us.  We ended up being on the road about 7 hours and drove over 300 miles.  (Maps from MapQuest.com, composite by Ben Cotton)  Click on the map for a larger view.

SPC Preliminary Reports:  http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/021110_rpts.html

Our hail report:

1940 75 WEST ELWOOD MADISON IN 4028 8586 REPORTED BY STORM SPOTTER. (IND)

Ohio welcomes Ben, Mike, and Joe.  Is that a tornado off in the distance?  No, but I wish it was.  (photos by Justin Koby)