April 9th, 2015 Chase Failure

April 9th will forever be a day that burns me up. It's the first day where I went home completely depressed, knowing I missed something amazing. I've refused to write up a log for it till nearly 3 months later, so here it goes.

Tornadoes: 0 (grrrr...)

Largest Hail: 1"

Highest Wind Gust: 30 mph (estimated)

This date was supposed to be a "day after the day" setup, as April 8th was the 15% hatched (DUN DUN DUN) in the Plains. April 8th turned out to be a big bust though, leaving April 9th to be "the day" across portions of Iowa and Illinois. This was also the first event where I really used models and tried to assess the weather data for myself rather than relying on the SPC, etc. Big thanks to Paul Sieczka, a meteorology student at College of DuPage who has served somewhat as my mentor, for allowing me to join in starting that day and listen to some of their forecasting discussions, and allowing me to learn through that. But back to the event, the SPC went 10% hatched, something I was incredibly excited to see. We hadn't had a 10%+ tornado day in the area since November 17th, 2013.

The day started out with the same old tune we have on severe weather days here in Illinois...morning crapvection. Or maybe it's just a 2015 thing? I dunno. But #2015ing is basically what happens when you take typical Illinois severe events and put them out over the Plains. But I digress. By 10-11 AM we were starting to see some clearing, although not widespread, it was enough.

Popcorn crapvection kept firing in the warm sector, some of which became a tornado warned supercell over Peoria, Woodford, and Marshall Counties around 2 PM. I knew this probably wasn't the main show, but bit on it anyway since it was a county to my south. Just as we got into the tornado warning polygon, the storm went bye-bye. It did produce a weak rope tornado near Sparland, but we were well out of range to see it. From there, we trekked north up to Rochelle (grrrr...) to position for some convection to the west, which died as well.

From there, we got lunch in Princeton and headed home. I knew it wasn't done, but our house was so well-positioned in the risk area that I figured we could pop out the door at a moment's notice if needed. At home, I watched many towers go up and fail to become something.

The hours passed, and I was pretty unimpressed with HP blobnadoes in Iowa and struggling supercells in eastern Missouri and west central Illinois. I didn't go for the warm front since I felt HP blobfest 2015 was going to be underway, and instead was eyeing out a southern play as supercells were developing and slowly organizing near Peoria. As I kept a lookout on the radar near Peoria, it happened...

My dad flipped to The Weather Channel, and my heart (and maybe body, mind, or mortal soul) immediately dropped.

The only word going through my mind at that time was, "SH*T!"

Probably one of the most incredible and photogenic tornadoes of all time was occurring 45 minutes from home, and I was sitting (more like having a mental breakdown) on the couch watching a live stream of it. This was probably the lowest I've felt in my life. This was tornado of the year, maybe a lifetime, so close, and I was sitting on my butt. I was done.

But of course, I wasn't done. Once I was able to regain composure, I went back to the computer to watch the radar on the Peoria cell. It was getting its act together slowly but surely and was close enough to bite, so off we went. It went tornado warned just after we left. And it was sunset, and there weren't too many low clouds obstructing our view, so we got some pretty amazing views.

I had just recently gotten a Canon Powershot G2 SLR (no, I didn't forget the "D" in front), and was very satisfied by how these turned out, especially since I'm no photography expert.

Once we got far enough south, we punched through some quarter sized hail and emerged from it north of Varna. Menacing HP structure ensued. Pictured below is a wall cloud with rapid motion on the north side of the RFD. We were in the inflow notch, potentially playing with the bear.

We turned east at the first road option headed that way and fled. I'm not a very experienced chaser, and I didn't feel completely comfortable being in this position.

So of course, we didn't get our redemption tornado, but it was interesting nonetheless. More interesting than staying home for sure. The Rochelle-Fairdale tornado would go on to be rated EF4 with winds of 200 mph, and was just an incredible sight to behold for those who witnessed it. Although I'm happy for them (or am I?), I'll be kicking myself for the rest of my life for missing that beast.

Video from the chase:

PLEASE excuse some of the stupid dialogue. I was pumped up with adrenaline and my words made no sense. I exclaim, "funnel" at one point when we see the wall cloud even though there's no evidence of one. I need to settle down more in situations like this in the future, haha.