May 2 TX/AR and May 13 IL

First I’ll post some pictures from the second. This was the last day I could be out west.  Chased with Amos Magliocco and Nick Grillo one last time.  We intercepted a cell west of Denton shortly after noon.  We took a route that turned out to be a route for a bike marathon.  We continually encountered this route as the storm continued to weaken.  We then tried to get to the SW side of Fort Worth and encountered gridlock traffic near the race way.  This was an indicator of how the day would turn out.  We were able to intercept a severe warned storm with a nice hook and 1 inch hail near Crosset, TX.  The storm speed made it impossible to keep up with as we tried to navigate the road network and southern suburbs of Fort Worth. Nick and I had broken off from Amos and since we had to head back home to MI we got out ahead of the squall line. Stopped at airport b/w FW and Dallas and caught some hand held shots of lightning.

As we continued out ahead of the line i felt we could stop and get some food in Sulfur Springs. The line caught up to us and it was not till Hope Arkansas till we finally reemerged from the storms. That was some intense driving for about 2 hours. I was able to capture this shot in motion.

Now to yesterday:

May 13. I was not able to leave Grand Rapids till 2:30pm EDT. I was hopeful for a secondary target of northern IL near Kankakee on west. I drove to Chenoa where i had witnessed at F2 May 23, 2004 Which yesterday reminded me off some what. As I approached Chenoa from the east a severe warning went out for Eureka IL Just like the 23rd. I could see the anvil and so i waited there in Chenoa. As the base approached you could see that it had at one point had supercell structure. Something just did not look right however, as the base looked eroded and looked like it was starting to die out. The Cap won the battle and the storm petered out soon after it passed by.

I had hoped for redevelopment. I wanted to meander north some but i noticed a data whole in Central IL for data through Alltel. From 10 miles south of I-80 b/w I-55 and I-39 to just north of Bloomington/Normal that you cannot get data without roaming through Alltell. Well anyway I headed north and went through Streator and to I-80 where i finally established connection again. It looked liek everything was lined out by then so i headed back to GR hoping for some lighting along the lake. While I saw lighting but it was not as frequent as what the NWR was mentioning nor was it very visible. It was very embedded in the rain making it hard to acquire photos. So Yesterdays chase was a bust was not able to leave early enough nor did I capture any lightning. I thought the storm near Chenoa might have it in it to continue but the the Cap and lack of instability proved to be to much to over come. My buddy’s Bob, Bill and Derek caught the Kirksville, MO tornado. Wish I could been there. Oh well you can’t see um all. Sorry for typos don’t have much time to edit today.