High risk....of a blizzard 3-2-12

The March 2nd setup was a very odd one to say the least, with strong low pressure moving over the great lakes it looks to be a double punch of strong tornadoes on the south end of the system and heavy snow on the northside where I live in Wisconsin. The original target was a bit of a gamble as we decided to target the US 24 corridor south of Kankakee Illinois, although the dynamics were not as strong as the southern part of the risk are, the threat for an early on show of large tornadoes was very evident on the models.
Being the first chase of the year we could hardly sleep, so at 330 Jason and I made the call to leave at 430 and get down in the target area and try to catch some ongoing convection coming into Illinois from Missouri and then wait it out for the later show. As we made it 1/2 wway to our target area the newer models seemed to be pushing the threat further and further south so we made the call to ditch initial target and head further south to the Champaign area. As we arrived in Champaign aa severe arned storm with reported golf ball size hail was making a beeline for Tuscola, just south of us, so we raced south in an attempt to intercept that storm. We basically arrived as the storm was going over the highway and we were greeted with a nice early season shelf.

Courtesy Jason Schwartzlow

The max size hail we ran into from this was dime size and the lightning was fading out fast so we let the storm pass and decided to go find an old gravel road to sit on and wait for anything else to form later in the day.
At around 10am the weather radio went off and the fun from the day was about to begin or so it seemed, the target we picked was issued a PDS (particulary dangerous situation) tornado watch. These watches are only issued a handful of times a year and are not normally a good thing, unless you want big storms, as we did :)

New storms were rapidly formimg to the west and flying east so it looked like the chase was on, we got on a nice cell around the Charleston area around noon and was surprised to see the storm only moving about 25mph. The storm was isolated and had a very nice inflow band feeding into it. The storm also features some prolific lightning as I was able to get my 1st decent lightning shot off of it.

As the storm continues to move off the the east it was starting to do some weird things, things I have never seen before from a thunderstorm. There was at one point a weird "ufo" shaped cloud formed along the edge of the storm that looked to be a detatched wall cloud but later an explanation was that it had to do with rising and sinking air inside the warm core of a storm.

At this time the storm to the south we passed up on to catch this storm went tornado warned and was just to far out of reach for us to catch back up to and with the cold front passage the threat for severe weather in our area had ended. We considered continuing east to get back ahead of the CF but with the waning snow storm back home we decided to call it a day and head back north towards home to try and beat the storm before dark. As we approached Paw Paw, IL on I-39 the wrm sprin weather we encountered earlier in the day was a soon to be distant memory, rain swiftly changed to snow and was coming down at a very fast rate, leaving several cars in the ditch and everything you could see snow covered. We did catch a nice thundersnow event in that area but that only added to the heavy snow. What was normally a 1 hour drigve from I-88 to home was quicly becoming a 3.5 hour nightmare.

In conclusion, what was a nice warm spring day 60F quickly smacked us with a reality check that it was infact still winter in these parts, more importantly was the fact that the very thing we love had once again taken lives and caused havoc on many peaople across the Ohio river valley. Thoughts and prayers continue for the people affected by this severe weather outbreak.

May 6th 2012 Northwest Illinois

Today started off as almost every typical severe weather day in the upper Midwest does...Left over crapvection from overnight storms that usually kill storm chances in the afternoon. On this particular day there was a pretty big MCS sitting in central Iowa and moving slowly east. towards our early target of around Sterling, Illinois.  As the morning progressed into the early afternoon the MCS slowly started to weaken and kick out an outflow boundary right towards our target area. Visible satellite was also showing a very nice area of clearing Right between the I-88 and I-80 area. Jason Schwartzlow and I decided to continue on with our plans to chase in the sterling area and drop south if need be. As we approached Walnut Illinois a decent tower started to rapidly take shape as did features on radar. We decided to head east and take a peak at that storm for a little bit to see if it had any potential, As we approached the storm it seemed to have more and more CG strikes with it, witch is usually a sure sign of a rapidly intensifying storm. The only way to get to the southern side of the storm was to core punch it which is what we did. After some nickel size hail and a flooded road we emerged on the other side of the cell witch had a beautiful base on it and sucking in some great inflow.

At this exact point we lost Internet data and the storm went tornado warned. We knew the general direction and speed the storm was moving so we felt no really need to worry too much about not having internet, as we continued to move south and east we realized that we were certainly right in the bears cage of the storm as it was showing signs of rotation right above us.

As we approached the town of Princeton Illinois we were very surprised to see baseball games going on and no warning sirens sounding at all, even though the rotation from the storm was making a direct path for the city. As soon as we cleared Princeton we got the best view of the base of the storm that we had seen yet and thought it to be a pretty good chance of producing a tornado at any moment. The sky was darkening and turning a very greenish tint and an eery calm was in the air.

As we continued east/southeast it was becoming very apparent at this point that the storms were becoming very outflow dominant and starting to go linear so we stopped and took in some of the sights of the storm and we were soon greeted with one of the most amazingly odd shelf clouds I have ever seen.

The decision was made at this point to abandon the storms at I-39 and head north towards home but not before being blasted by wet RFD winds and some 1/2 dollar sized hail, we were also treated to an amazing lightning display as storms continued off to the east. Although we did not see a tornado this day, it was one of my most memorable chases that I will not soon forget.

June 9th 2012

The planned target on this particular day was somewhere in the Fargo, ND area. The models seemed to show atleast a localized tornado threat with CAPE forecasted to be in the 3000-3500Jkg range and EHIs to about 8. A strong warm front was moving north along with a trailing colf front that would be our trigger for the storms that day...The SPC maintained a slight risk for a good portion of our taret area for most of the day.

I met up with Adam Lucio, Billie Marcum, and Alec Scholten around 4:30am at my house in Janesville, WI, From there our plan was to marathon it all the way to Fargo, ND and meet up with a few other chasers at a local hotel and determine our target from there. We arrived in Fargo around 1:30 pm and proceeded to get lost looking for the hotel...after we arrived finaly we sat around talking the day and pouring over models determining the best spot to chase. After several minutes of discussion we agreed to head north a ways towards Grand Forks, ND and then head west from there.

After a quick bite to eat we made our way towards our target and decided to stop on an old road that was filled with potholes and bumps like youve never experienced before. After sitting at our area for awhile it became apparent that the CAP was holding pretty strong and it looked like it was going to be an almost certain blue sky bust. Just when mood where getting down in the dumps Adam all of the sudden perked up and yelled "look at that one go up" We sat there for a few minutes and pretty soon the storm was going up fast and the chase was on!

The one biggest mistake we made was not filling the gas tank up before getting there so we had to shoot north to a gas station before flying east to catch the storm near Cavalier, ND. As we approached the storm it had several good looking feature on it, but the base seemed to be pretty high so we turned on to a gravel road and headed north and east to get out ahead of it to get a better look. As we approached the storm from the south we noticed a rather small but mean looking hail shaft with it.

As we continues down the road we came through an area where hail had previously falled and looked to be golf ball sizee and maybe even larger. The storm at times did seem to show some weak rotation but never truly could get its act together, at this point we were rapidly approaching the Canadian border and knew we would be unable to cross into Canada.

As we go close enough to know we had to abandon it, our fearless leader looked behind us and yelled very excitedly and scared the ever loving bejeses out of us and pulled over rather quickly. What we saw in the next few minutes may not have been what we came for, but we sure were rewarded with the beauty mother nature has to hold.

All in all it was a great day with many great moments and awesome laughs along the way. North Dakota is a beautiful state that I would love to go back to again soon.

You can go to aerostorms.com and get a more detailed description of our chase in probably a week or so. I look forward to many more chases and great moments like this one!