June 11th, 2015 Warm Front Bust
This day I knew right off the bat was going to be a boom or bust. If the atmosphere along the warm front could destabilize, then all hell could break loose. But MORNING CONVECTION prevails again, leaving little more than some tiny rain shower "supercells."
Tornadoes: 0
Largest Hail: N/A
Highest Wind Gust: 20 mph (estimated)
I have no photos/video to add since I believe I accidentally deleted the video and I didn't take any photos. I would at least have some low quality dashcam video, but I accidentally dropped that camera into a raging stream while documenting a flash flood. That camera has probably made it to the Gulf of Mexico by now. RIP crappy $20 GoPro ripoff and 16 GB SD card.
I basically knew from late morning on it would be a bust. But I kept in denial and eagerly awaited storm development. It actually did happen surprisingly, although it wasn't extremely robust. Crapvection in Iowa slowly intensified into storms as they crossed the Mississippi River. A mesoscale discussion was issued for a 40% chance of a watch. I wasn't at all optimistic about the watch being issued. Maybe a few damaging wind gusts in northwest Illinois was my thinking, with maybe a chance of a brief spinup on the warm front.
The MD came and went with no watch, just as I expected. But I heard some "down the line" rumors that the NWS offices in Davenport, Chicago, and Lincoln were able to get SPC to issue a Tornado Watch for the area in case one of the storms rode the warm front. Sure enough, a watch was issued not much later.
Right about at the time of the watch issuance, a tornado was confirmed somewhere in the Mercer-Warren-Henderson County area. That was more of a QLCS tornado than a supercell one, but it was at least proof that the potential was there. Not impressive, but there. A small cell over Whiteside/Lee Counties was able to latch onto the warm front for some brief time, which I was unable to observe, but some other chasers were. No tornado dropped from it. We caught that cell after it passed the warm front and was nothing but a grungy ground-scraping shelf cloud. Another "storm" fired near Walnut in Bureau County, which at least looked interesting with a grungy and poorly organized, but again, ground-scraping cloud base. Once that moved away, we ended the chase. Nothing to write home about, but since it was technically a chase, I'm typing up a log about it.
Just for a quick laugh, here's the biggest truth about that day:
June 11th, 2015: the day I became the EXTREEM SKUD CHAYSUR.
