Pneumonia Front & A Shot In The Dark.

April 3rd 2012 Will likely be remembered for tornadoes that struck the Dallas, Tx area with images of semi trailers being lofted through the air like toys being thrown by a child. Watching it unfold while driving to our target along the I-80 corridor in Illinois.
The particular set up this day was one of my favorites, for early April temps were pushing into the upper 80s and dewpoints were rising into the 60s. There was an area of low pressure over Northern Illinois with a warm front stretched across the eastern part of the state and a trailing cold front, essentially giving us a warm sector triple point play.

The plan was to leave here around 2pm and arrive to the I-80 area around 3:30 just in time for storms to initiate. When we finally arrived to the target there was nothing but the clear blue skies as far as the eye could see, and not even a hint of any CU on visible satellite, a very concerning thing. We decided head a little further south and get into a little more open terrain. Wenona is where we ended up stopping for the waiting game, a highway side town that had nothing more than a gas station and a hotel with 0 guests. Around 4:30 a few small cells had begun to form to our south near Bloomington but were quickly forming into a weak line and not really a plausible distance to try and intercept. Shortly there after a small cumulus tower began to form to our southeast and had quickly organized on radar. The storm also quickly took "the shape" that jelly bean looking shape that so often you see do amazing things. Now the chase was on. Now anyone who chases knows as soon as the storm you want is there, the road networks seem to vanish, and trying to catch up to a storm moving at 5mph seems like an impossible task. Shortly before we caught up with the storm went severe warned for strong winds of 65+mph and large hail. Soon after this we finally got into a good position to view the storm and had high hopes as it looked to be a very healthy looking storm and had some great atmosphere out ahead of it to continue growing.

(C) Jason Schwartzlow

 

At this point we got into some heavy wind and pea size hail but couldn't get quite into the bigger hail core. Now the one factor that we never took into consideration was a Pneumonia front coming off of Lake Michigan headed right at us. Now if you are unaware of what that is, it is a small cold front that comes off the lake bringing in very cold air behind it. Which this particular one did and hit our storm, killing it in its tracks that quick and dropping the temps from 90F to 50F in 10 minutes. We started to make the 3 hour jaunt back home since it was getting dark and nothing was panning out when a tiny cell had formed just to out south along the cold front and just sat stationary. The storm was spitting out a few awesome lightning strikes every now and then so we decided to stop and see if we could get any shots, a decision we would not regret at all as we found ourselves staring at one of the most prolific CG barrages I have ever seen. After missing several bolts I finally was able to capture one that to this day still gets me fire up, causing me to jump up and down the country road like a little kid!

 

We stayed here for probably another hour or so just shooting lightning and having a blast watching the barrage of strikes around us. One of the better days I have had this year for it starting out as a small possibility.

 

My video basically documents some of the smaller hail we got into with this storm, but if not interested in that you can skip ahead and watch the awesome lightning time lapse that accompanied the storm. Thank you for reading :)