February 28th, 2017 Central Illinois Tornadoes

Tornadoes: 3

Highest Wind Gust: 75 mph (estimated)

Largest Hail: 1.5"

The February 28th event was a pretty highly anticipated event. The day after the whole flat tire ordeal on the 24th, our group chat began to light up with discussion about the upcoming Tuesday. I had already taken 2 days off work the week prior, and was extremely nervous that I wouldn't be allowed another day off. This left me to procrastinate asking off work. In the meantime, models would not back off their tornadic-looking solutions. A deepening low pressure system was progged across southern Iowa, draping a warm front along the I-80 corridor in Illinois. Along and south of the front and well into the warm sector, a broad area of backed surface winds provided ample directional shear while screaming mid-to-upper level winds provided excessive speed shear. Modest instability (although high for February) and a stout but breakable EML coupled with the insane shear meant the potential for intense, discrete, long-tracked supercells across portions of Illinois down into the mid-South.

SPC went MDT across much of the Ohio Valley, including a 15% risk for tornadoes along with a much broader region of 10% probs encompassing much of the warm sector:

SPC mesoanalysis depicts >1000 SBCAPE across most of Illinois at 22z. Also notable are the due southerly to southeasterly wind barbs, particularly along the northern edge of the instability gradient where the warm front is located:

Observed ILX sounding at 00z, appoximately the time the Washburn tornado was underway. Note the large looping hodograph and relatively large CAPE:

Our target was the warm front at my house. Somewhere near my house looked to be ground zero for the northern target, and I was actually somewhat nervous, especially as HRRR run after HRRR run had the same isolated supercell leaving a fat UDH track right over me across multiple runs in the several hours preceding the event. It was a promising sign for chasing obviously, but unnerving to be so close to home.

I finished the school day as a Tornado Watch was issued shortly before dismissal:

Matt Zuro and Daniela Barrios were already at my house waiting for me as I raced home from school. When I pulled in, we hardly even said a word before we tossed all of their stuff into my vehicle and piled in. Storms were starting to go up in west-central Illinois, quickly turning supercellular, and moving east-northeast in our general direction. At the time, there was one supercell in particular that looked good: the northernmost one across Stark and western Bureau Counties. We took our time getting to it, as storms were hauling and not yet fully organized. We turned south in the middle of a wind farm in Bureau County to get ahead of the base. Although nothing particularly impressive, there was a fairly well-developed wall cloud and long inflow and beaver tails feeding into it.

The storm was clearly racing towards us, and even though it was still a few miles out, I didn't want to risk getting run over by a developing tornado as we tried to escape east into a deteriorating road network close to the Illinois River. So we proactively began flooring it east, crossed the river, and 20 minutes later ended up only a couple miles south of my house, which the base of the storm looked like it was going to pass right over. This cell was surely the most dominant at the time, as even though there were additional cells to its south and west, this one went up first and had the warm front to work with. Exactly what the HRRR had shown. The base gave a shelfy, outflow dominant look to it, making us unenthusiastic about pursuing the storm further. We considered bailing for a more promising storm to the southwest.

Shortly after, we did bail down highway 89. As soon as we reached McNabb, the sirens were blaring. We assumed the county was just sounding sirens for a high-end severe warning or something, but a few seconds later, Matt Magiera messaged the chat saying he and Scott Matthews were on a tornado near Standard, about 3 miles east of my house. I immediately slammed the brakes and turned east onto the next road. I was pretty hysterical at this point, having missed a tornado I likely could've seen if I had just stayed home. We started racing down the road just to see if we could catch back up to the storm, which was about 7 miles to our north. At a certain point we just had to give it up, with the storm probably moving upwards of 50 mph.

We returned to Granville, arriving at the Casey's in town, where we then unloaded our anger and each individually screamed obscenities. Matt and Scott were now on a rain-wrapped wedge tornado near Ottawa. We missed the show. Or so we thought. Looking at radar, the storm we were originally bailing towards showed much better organization as it lifted northeast from Peoria. I wasn't sure we would make it in time, but Zuro reassured me as we booked it down the road to get to I-39, where we could zoom south out ahead of the storm. It was a gut-wrenching 20 minutes of anticipation. We started closing in on the Wenona exit when Zuro said there were tornado reports coming in, he just wasn't sure if it was a brief touchdown or not. A tornado warning was out for the storm now as we began climbing the hill of the exit to get off the interstate. Way in the distance to our southwest, a fat figure loomed under the cloud base.

"LARGE TORNADO," we all started yelling, ecstatic that we had actually scored today. I was once again fairly hysterical, this time for the sudden swing of emotions from cripping failure to massive success. It's quite a swing of emotions to happen in a split second.

The tornado when we first saw it, and likely as it was just getting out of Washburn. It's well in the distance at this point:

I had finally gained enough composure to think about moving in for a better shot. We made our way west and south incrementally, still a distance away from the tornado:

Stout stovepipe shrouding itself in dust.

Wide shot of a large dusty barrel with full supercell structure.

Zoomed in shot as it began to draw closer. The tornado at this point was about as wide as it was tall.

Massive wedge-shaped tornado from our perspective churning away with dirt. This was it at its widest.

The tornado drew closer as it began to dissolve. A single hollow, dusty tube remained as we positioned about a quarter mile down a gravel road from it:

A bowl condensation funnel also re-formed. It was a beautiful, graceful snaky tube as it crossed the road, a stark contrast from the dusty barrel monster it once was.

It finally dissolved completely, and we were left to try and find our bearings to reposition on the next cycle, which had previously formed on top of us but was now to our northeast. We came to the small town of Rutland, where we entered some hefty RFD winds, likely on the order of 75 mph or so. A light pole was blown over to our left and shingles and siding were flapping/blowing away to our right. I was a bit scared to drive through town as I didn't want a tree to blow over onto us, so we waited a minute before continuing through town. We came to a stop sign with a clearing in the middle of town, where we saw another funnel descending off the RFD gust front to our southeast. We now gunned it out of town, where we found a dust cloud to signal it was on the ground as it pushed northward.

There was no defined RFD cut feeding this tornado. There was a definite RFD cut wrapping around the main mesocyclone to its north, which was tornado-less. It reminds me more of an eddy on the RFD front than a mesocyclonic tornado. I know it wasn't anticyclonic, either. The tornado lasted a few minutes before dissipating. Crossing its damage path, a single power pole was blown over and a shed was heavily damaged. We pressed on, trying to catch up with the main meso. Another 5 minutes later, ANOTHER tornado formed down the RFD front, again not anticyclonic. There is some clear-slot stuff going on it appears, but placed like it would be around an anticyclonic tornado. The rotation at its base proved otherwise, though.

As the went through an intersection, a structure exploded into the debris cloud of the tornado. A roof flew into the treeline behind the building and insulation/drywall dust lit the debris cloud up a whitish color. The tornado dissolved only seconds later.

Video of the tornadoes:

We knew we had to go to the building to see if anyone was there. I was fairly sure it was just a barn. As we pulled up, however, we realized it was a house that was significantly damaged:

As we pulled up, a family was just coming out of the basement. There were two elementary-school aged kids, both in shock. Daniela promptly called 911 while Matt and I let the kids sit in our backseat while they waited for the emergency crews to get there. This was definitely a low point in my life, consoling a little boy who had no grasp on what had just happened, sitting next to his house that was a pile of rubble. I feel good about helping those people, but terrible for filming and being excited for the tornado that changed their lives forever. That's one of the internal conflicts chasers have to deal with, and we had finally seen it firsthand. When the firefighters showed up, we offered to leave as we didn't want to be in the way. Before we left, the mother gave us all a hug and sincerely thanked us for helping them in their time of need. Something I'm never going to forget.

We headed back for my house, still shaken by what had happened. There was another potentially tornadic round of storms developing to our west, but it was pitch black and we had already seen our fair share for the day. As Matt and Daniela headed home, a tornado warning was issued for my house in northern Putnam County around 9:30-10:00pm. The circulation passed well to my north, but it was yet another hectic thing to happen that day.

Multiple significant tornadoes tore through the Midwest, with 2 EF3s, including the one we saw that struck Washburn and the one Magiera and Scott saw that hit Ottawa, unfortunately causing 2 fatalities in Ottawa. An EF4 crossed from Missouri into Illinois after dark, which a number of chasers were on. It was truly a signficant tornado day.

SPC Storm Reports:

My GPS location was apparently not working on this chase, so I can't display it here.