Today was a day filled with hopes.... sort of.... These high risk days in Illinois are known to bust and tend to leave people disappointed if they want to see some severe weather. Anyway, we headed out from DeKalb around 1PM and headed for an early target near Freeport, IL. We didn't quite make it but noticed that storms were starting to go up a bit early. The boundary that developed was draped from Dubuque, IA to DeKalb, IL and was helping storms spin but... something was amiss. Once storms crossed the boundary they became elevated and did all sorts of funky things. Most of the storms went too early and really couldn't stay isolated. The early storm motion was parallel to the low level winds and as a result were subject to crappy storm relative inflow....We let the early storms pass because they were merging/throwing off splits left and right.... We decided to wait around in Stockton, IL and grab a bite to eat. A storm sitting over Dubuque, IA was headed our way and really the only thing worth watching. Though we all thought it looked awful on radar, the storm started to get it's act together. So, we ended up messing around with it and when we got visual we noticed a dark lowering back in the storm.... Things became interesting at that point. We were in pretty country but bad chase terrain with trees and hills. We found high ground and watched the tornado bounce over the hills and trees. Though the tornado really never got completely condensed down to the ground until late, it actually held ground circulation for quite a long time (10-15 min). We soon ran out of road and tried getting back in front of it with hopes that it would cycle.... Once we moved about 10 miles SE we noticed that the air it was feeding on was quite cool and relatively dry compared to the air a few miles back. The storm began to surge out/become elevated. It did develop some interesting features like an orphaned horizontal funnel and a roll cloud though. Illinois owed me one! Enjoy!
Victor Gensini's account of the day
Walker Ashley's account of the day
Matt Piechota's Video of the tornado
NWS survey results-
* LOCATION...THE TRACK BEGAN 6 MILES NORTH OF SAVANNA AND ENDED 4
MILES WEST OF MOUNT CARROLL
* TIMING...FROM 6:53 TO 7:03 PM.
* INJURIES/FATALITIES...1 INJURY.
* EF-SCALE RATING...EF2.
* ESTIMATED MAX WIND SPEED...135 MPH.
* MAX WIDTH...ONE HALF MILE
* PATH LENGTH...APPROXIMATELY 6 MILES.
* DAMAGE INFORMATION...THE PATH OF THE TORNADO WAS WELL DEFINED WITH
SIGNIFICANT TREE DAMAGE. SEVERAL FARM OUT BUILDINGS WERE DAMAGED
AND ONE HOUSE WAS PUSHED OFF ITS FOUNDATION.
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