June 22nd, 2016 Northern Illinois Tornadoes

Tornadoes: 2

Highest Winds: ~65 mph

Largest Hail: N/A

Chase Partners: Matt Magiera, Scott Matthews, Paul Sieczka, among others

By mid-June, I was beginning to accept that I would probably go through 2016 without seeing a tornado. I had planned a week-long chasecation in sometime between June 10-20th in the northern Plains, but that went down the drain as it was clear Mother Nature would not provide during what turned out to be one of the quietest Junes on record. Then, around the 18th, the models began picking up on a potentially significant severe weather setup across Illinois.

A warm front was forecast to drape across northern Illinois with strong NW flow, very strong directional shear, steamy dewpoints, and abundant instability, depending some on morning convection clearing out. All the "pretty colors" parameters were forecast to max out, probably the biggest reason for all the hype surrounding the event. Questions surrounding storm mode were the predominant issue, with the potential for supercells early on turning into an intense squall line. The SPC issued a Moderate Risk for damaging winds, with a 10% hatched for tornadoes:

The night before, I planned to meet up with several others, including Paul Sieczka, Matt Magiera, and Scott Matthews at Paul's apartment in DeKalb around 10 or 11 AM. I woke up around 9 o'clock, rushed to get my things together, and took the drive up to DeKalb. While on I-39 northbound, there was some neat elevated convection with localized areas of dense fog as I crossed the warm front, and it got noticeably colder.

Paul's apartment was packed with meteorology students and chasers looking at weather data and waiting. When Matt and Scott finally arrived, we decided to split up into groups, each of which would take one vehicle. I got together with Matt and Scott, while Paul and the rest took his car. We went west to Rochelle, where we met Victor Gensini and some others from College of DuPage, who were planning on doing a weather balloon launch. CBS 2 Chicago was also there to do a news story on it. When we first pulled up, we were one of only 4 vehicles pulled up to the site of the launch. Within half an hour, the area was packed with chasers who happened to be passing by and saw what was happening.

While we were sitting and waiting for the right time for launch, an MD came out for a likely Tornado Watch:

After an hour or so, the weather balloon is finally launched, with a little bit of an issue...

As the warm front passes overhead, our caravan of chasers takes off west on I-88, and stops at a McDonald's in Dixon to await initiation. Around 5PM, we start getting nervous nothing substantial will be able to get going and that the day would be a major bust. The MD had expired, yet no watch had come out. After several minutes of nervousness, it finally did:

Shortly after, storms were able to get going, rapidly becoming supercellular. The first one to really get its act together was coming towards us, so we dropped south a bit to get a view of its base as it passed by. We pulled over just past an intersection south of Dixon to watch it approach. As it did, lightning strikes became extremely frequent and increasingly close. After a certain point, it was so frequent that you could easily catch a bolt with your DSLR. These images are ever-so-slightly out of focus, but they're good enough to show:

As the base drew closer, it became apparent that it was undergoing its first cycle with RFD beginning to build behind the circulation and starting to wrap around its southern side. It really started exhibiting textbook supercell structure, as a solid beaver tail and wall cloud displayed themselves.

The storm begins catching up to us, and we begin to race SE to get ahead of it. The storm really began to enter "beast mode" HP status as we did this. Positive CGs increased even more, a very wet RFD started completing its wrap-around, and a massive inflow band was feeding into the mesocyclone.

Random teddy bear in the back of Matt's car likes himself a tornado every now and again, too.

Nearing Sublette (where I had seen a tornado exactly one year before), we begin to realize that although the storm is likely tornadic at this point, it was hopelessly rain wrapped. With this, we begin to target the next storm down the line which is also tornado warned. We floor it down I-39 to La Salle where we then get on I-80 westbound, getting off at the Ladd exit. Going through Ladd, I had to call my parents as another supercell to our south prompted a Tornado Warning for our house. At the same time, Matt had to call his family because the northernmost cell was threatening his home. That's the first time I've had that happen while chasing.

We continued northward to Cherry, where we finally pull over to watch the incredible but low-contrast supercell structure. DSLR pics turned out grainy because my ISO was set to "auto," but I still got salvageable images:

A cell phone panorama:

We decided to try to get closer and follow the circulation from behind to see any tornado that would otherwise be wrapped in rain from any other position. We got a mile or two north of Cherry before finding a back road that went straight east. Racing down that road, we saw three total circulations looking north: one decaying one to the northwest, one mature with wrapping RFD to our due north, and a newly developing one to our northeast. We watched the mature one closely, but it did not produce any tornado that we could see. Eventually, we came to a "T" in the road, where we stopped. The new circulation was really starting to get going now. There was a shallow bowl lowering on the western edge of the wall cloud that had rapid motion and that we were watching closely. In the distance to the left of the wall cloud, power flashes occurred, likely due to intense RFD winds:

We watched that shallow bowl so closely, in fact, that we hardly realized it when a funnel descended from the cloud base to its right:

This funnel eventually dissolved after 30 seconds or so, but it was a promising sign. Given another minute or so, another funnel began to descend from the cloud base. But this time, it touched ground:

Video:

Matt took one for the team and called the Chicago NWS to report while the rest of us video'd. Numerous cloud-to-ground strikes were flying forth from the heavens. The tornado only lasted for around a minute, but did some EF1 damage in Troy Grove. A very wet RFD soon encompassed the circulation as a new one developed to our east.

We got onto Route 6 towards Ottawa as darkness fell upon us. We were getting backlit views of the base through lightning. One flash unveiled a raggedy, thin rope extending from the cloud base to the ground. Tornado #2! My camera was conveniently out of focus for the few seconds before and after the sighting, but I did see it. This turned out to be an EF1 tornado northwest of Ottawa.

We eventually made it into Ottawa, where we started to fall behind again. We had two options: try to outrun the rain-wrapped circulation that would likely cross the road we were driving on at night, or bail and head home. Come to think of it, there was also a third option which was to fly south after the new storm that would later produce the Pontiac EF2. But hindsight is always 20/20. We went with the latter option, and started north through Ottawa towards DeKalb. Had we continued forward, we may have driven into the EF2 that hit Seneca minutes later.

As we were going through the north side of Ottawa, the power went out as the winds likely exceeded 60 mph. Numerous chasers were pulled over to document what was probably intense RFD winds as they ended their chases as well. We soon came out of town, and up near Earlville when we turned onto a back road that would get up to DKB sooner. And 100 yards onto the road, a local tells us that it's impassable due to floodwaters. So we go to the the next road a mile or so east, and run into more floodwaters that were passable, but we almost hydroplaned off the road as we didn't see it until it was too late. We stopped for a minute to warn Paul's vehicle and other people behind us.

We got back to DKB sometime around 10:30pm, where we all said our goodbyes and split up. The drive home was a relaxing one, driving down the quiet interstate with lightning-flickering storm towers way south complemented by starry skies in the foreground. Arriving into Granville an hour later, trees were down all over town, blocking roads, and the power was out. The RFD of the supercell I missed really surged as the circulation passed a mile or so north of town. It was tricky finding a path home through the maze of blocked and unblocked streets, but I eventually made it.

This is by far the most enjoyable chase I've ever had. The tornado catches were nothing particularly special, but the people I was with and the insanity of the day in general was amazing. This event happened on the anniversary of an extremely similar day a year beforehand, on which I saw an EF2 tornado only about 20 miles or so from where we saw our tornadoes on this chase. I was determined before this chase to not go over a year without seeing a tornado, and I just barely squeaked by with that goal, with exactly a year passing between tornado sightings.

In total, 18 tornadoes occurred across northern Illinois, with two EF2s: one hitting Seneca, and the other hitting Pontiac. It was a very notable day for the area, but given everything that was in place, it could have been worse, as most of the tornadoes were brief, weak, and short-lived, just as both our tornadoes were. A map of all tornadoes that had occurred within NWS Chicago's CWA, our catches circled in red: