May 27, 2006 Storm Chase
So far our trip has started off with several “omens”. First it was a Chase Bank sign, then we saw a Chase Street sign, then we saw Chicago’s “Windy City” sign. Next, we realized we would be in good position to intercept a storm. Scott Keddie, Ron Gravelle and I have encountered a supercell near Paw Paw, Illinois at around 5 pm CST. A line of supercells were tracking into the Midwest, and the storm that we were after was the tail end Charlie. It had 50 thousand feet echo tops on it, and was producing 2 inch hail. It also had a meso. The NWS issued a tornado warning for La Salle county. We were in perfect position. We headed north to position ourselves at the back end of the storm. We saw what looked like a developing wall cloud just south of the precip core. A clockwise rotation eddy formed in the clouds right above our heads, which was kinda neat. It looked almost like a cinnamon bun swirl.
Ron pointed to an area between some trees. A small rain wrapped tornado could have been inside there. I couldn’t really see it so I will have to watch my videos later to see if the camera picked it up. Scud was also rising off the ground. A classic wall cloud didn’t form, but the area under the meso had some rotation swirls in the base. Then the rear flank downdraft kicked up a dust foot.
Afterwards, we drove into the small town of Paw Paw and encountered 2 inch hail. This is the biggest I have seen so far, and let me tell you it was very loud. It actually did leave some shallow hail dents on the van! The precip core was intense zero visibility. We went through a large puddle. At this point I was afraid of flash flooding and hydroplaning. Unfortunately it seems that Ron had lost one of his storm chasing tours magnets from the deluge.
We stayed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa over night. This was a pretty good start to the trip and we haven’t even started trying to look for stuff yet.
