July 12, 2014 Rain Shower Supercells

I don't vividly remember the day this happened, but I do know that the SPC had 5% tornado probabilities across Northern Illinois. This was also another "Lieowa" day, with several chasers being attracted to a bust in Eastern Iowa. On the radar, Illinois looked quiet. However, the skies had something else to say.

Our family is typically busy on Saturday nights, and since I'm 15, I'm 100% at the mercy of my parents. However, I did manage to convince my dad to chase. I kept my eye on an iffy-looking but severe warned supercell that developed north of the Quad Cities, and decided we should approach it from the south just to poke our nose in. As we approached, I could tell what I was seeing on the ground did NOT match what I was seeing on radar. The "storm" had basically fizzled to a small green blob on radar, surely nothing I would be concerned about. But the structure of the thing was much better. We stopped north of the tiny Ohio, IL to observe the wall cloud while being surrounded by windmills. It was quite a sight to behold! The following image does NOT contain the wall cloud, but is a great shot from the wind farm nonetheless!

The next image DOES contain the wall cloud, but not the windmills. How 'bout a complimentary CG? This is one of only 3 we saw that day.

We pressed east to keep up, noticing that there were several small cumulus towers/rain showers with wall clouds underneath the base. One in particular REALLY piqued my interest, so we headed north into Lee County to get closer.

There was a beautiful Low Precipitation "UFO" structure to this particular "storm!"

Finally, a time lapse of this LP structure as it grew dark and it moved futher away!

This was quite a pleasant surprise for a day I thought would be completely nothing. I found out later on that Tony Laubach did spot a tiny funnel underneath one of these wall clouds near Dixon, IL, not very far away from where we were! Also, later in the evening that day, a nicely defined supercell developed in west central Illinois, producing a tornado debris signature for a couple of scans. All in all, just a pleasant surprise, and this "chase" wrapped up 2014 for me. VERY disappointing year, but one where I learned to appreciate all storms, severe or not.