September 26, 2003
Central Illinois
Sigh. Chasing in this part of the country is...special. I was up late last night, and decided to catch the Day 1 Outlook. I saw the moderate risk and thought "woo hoo!" In the morning a team was assembled and we got underway. Due to class restrictions, we weren't able to leave until almost 2 EST. Our target, based on RUC and real data analysis was Clinton, IL -- an
area we had almost good luck with in early April. We loaded up and headed west into Illinois. As we entered the town of Paxton, our nowcaster Kyle Harmon called to let us know about a cell to our northwest with a strong meso. Fools that we are, we decided to let that one go by and continue on to our primary target. As we begin to approach the Clinton metroplex, we start seeing
CGs. All of a sudden, the rain came. Moments later, the hail came too. Ranging from pea to 1/2 inch, the hail battered us for about 10 minutes before the storm passed. The clear skies we had been enjoying gave way to a rather obnoxious stratus deck. At 4:41 we stopped on the west end of Clinton and debated our course of action. By this time, all of the storms had merged into a squall line. We decided that being without shelter in a squall line would be a bad idea, so we moved to a location where we could have a close shelter should the need arise and wait the line out. After heated discussion, we ended up at the Lodge Church of God in Lodge, IL. We stopped around 5:30 and shortly thereafter, the line came upon us. By the time it reached Lodge, the tornado warnings were no longer coming (a big comment considering the tendency of ILX to issues TORs) and it became a wet, windy time to sit in the car. The worst of the storm eventually passed to our south, but I imagine it would have been wet and rainy there too.
Retrospectively, we probably should have done two things: 1. left sooner 2. gone after the cell NW of Paxton. Had we been out sooner, we might have been able to catch the excitement in western IL before it became one ugly squall line. The cell we didn't chase producted 1" hail. All in all, it was good for experience and a bit of SDS relief. Here's hoping the rest of the fall season is a bit more chasable in these parts...
The line was a prolific lightning producer, as shown in this NLDN plot. (Data from Vaisala, via SUNY Albany)
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