Christmas Chase with the FIBs

Wednesday December 23rd was destined to be a chase day for about a week prior, the only question would be where. The initial thought was the mid south would be the only place to be. A few days prior a secondary threat started to materialize in central Illinois as deepening low pressure was forecasted to bring mild temps and spring like moisture to this part of the country.  The day prior the decision was made to stay in Illinois and target near the low pressure. Most models indicated decent cape and shear as well as showing a few rotating supercells developing in north central Illinois.

 

Wednesday morning we awoke to a slight risk of severe weather all the way into southern Wisconsin and a very evident, albeit small tornado risk in western and central Illinois.

 

I left my house in Janesville at around 8:30am to meet Alec Scholten in Rockton. On the way to Alec's house it was quite foggy, cool and began to rain. I remember thinking to myself "How is this even a chase day" We left Alec's house to snag up Brett Wright and began our trip to La Salle where we would meet up at Dennys with Adam Lucio and Danny Neal. 

After grabbing a bite to eat and looking over the day ahead, we decided to play west central Illinois.
The mood was rather festive to say the least and you could feel the excitement in the air as the sun decided to make an appearance for the 1st time of the day. While sitting and talking about past chases the Christmas music was loudly playing over the loud speakers at the truck stop we awaited at and then the music was broke by a familiar sound of cell phones going off alerting us a tornado watch was being issued for our area. (Christmas Music and weather radios) Never thought I would be able to say that together but chase on!

 

We set out to our southwest as a line of supercells started to rapidly develop in eastern Iowa and Northeast Missouri. How far west we wanted to go was the question, we ran a bit of disagreement to this as I though we would get to far west to have any good position as I thought storm motions would be a little bit faster than they were. After a brief discussion it was decided to continue west/southwest and try and get into position before dark.

 

We proceeded to drive south on Highway 67 towards Macomb when we started to get our 1st glimpse at the low topped cumulus towers and clear view of several bases from our location. During this time storms would start to take on quickly changing characteristics from looking good to looking kind of cruddy with no dominant storm making it's presence known quite yet. After continuing to drive south we decided to stop in the town of Roseville for gas and reevaluate our situation. After getting fuel we decided the southernmost storm was the dominant storm. (A decision we would soon regret)

 

 

As we continued south towards Macomb a train would block our highway and we decided to take an alternate route east and then back south as to not lose our chance at our storm. When we finally got back into position for our storm we got our 1st view at its base and updraft. It wasn't bad looking but not the greatest either but there was several intense lightning bolts shooting out in front of it that gave it the impression it was rapidly intensifying. We stopped along a country road for a few minutes to watch the storm approach when our phones once again alerted all of us to a tornado warning with a confirmed tornado just back to our north (Rememeber the train tracks) so we quickly spun around and headed back north to get to the storm.  As we punched through the core of our storm we encountered some heavy rains and gusty winds before coming out to a clearing on the other side and having a visual on the tornado warned storm, which was nothing more than a weak little updraft with almost no precipitation. We continued to follow this storm for a few miles while going through small towns with tornado sirens blaring and Christmas decorations hung all over the place, a very confusing sight.

On the tornado warned cell near Macomb
Posted by Danny Neal on Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Soon after the storm had dissipated and we were left with a line of dying storms that had one more great surprise in store for us. As the sun began to set the updrafts directly over our heads began to light up an amazing pinkish/orange color and started developing some awesome mammatus, something I always enjoy seeing!

After taking several pictures out the car window the sun would soon be set and our chase day was over, or so we thought.
As we traveled back north to get back to the highway home a small lightning-less updraft quickly formed and went tornado warned. After watching this for several minutes nothing would come of it and the warning was soon canceled.

Soon after this we would learn we missed a small rope tornado back near Roseville and then would learn of a violent tornado in the Mississippi & Tennessee area. Feeling a little dejected we began our trip home, but it occurred to me on the way home that we got to chase in late December less than 4 hours from home and got to see some beautiful things along the way as well as many many laughs!

Thank you to Alec, Adam, Brett, & Danny for a fun filled day!

Please be sure to like my page at https://www.facebook.com/WisconsinWeatherPhotography
Also be sure to check out my friends pages here for great weather info, photographs and more!

Adam Lucio and Danny Neal: https://www.facebook.com/illinoisstormchasersllc

Brett Wright: https://www.facebook.com/TornadoTitans

Alec Scholten: ( You can also book storm chasing tours through him) https://www.facebook.com/TwistedSkyTours