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Started the day with an initial target of Hannibal, Mo with myself, Scott Kampas, and Darin Kaiser all riding in my car. We ended up sitting for a while in Jacksonville, IL at a motel that had wi-fi. While at the motel, we had a mini chaser convergence among IL chasers. Skip Talbot, Fabian Guerra, and Jerry Funfsinn all joined us in the parking lot party. Eventually storms exploded near the Mississippi river and quickly everyone went West towards them on I-72. As the caravan  went Westward, we decided that it would be best to stay to the East of the storms so we went Northward to Mt. Sterling on Route 107. When we got to Mt. Sterling, the severe warned cell to our NNE had a real nice looking rock hard tower so we decided to go towards it by going on Route 24 Northward to Rushville. While at the North end of town we watched the base of the storm and it looked like crap so we decided to let the storm go to our NE without following it and head towards a cell that was near Hannibal, Mo.  While heading towards the Hannibal cell, we noticed what appeared to be a developing wall cloud to our WNW North of Mt. Sterling. The wall cloud quickly developed and soon developed a tail cloud. A scud like feature developed under the wall cloud and we figured that some sheriff  deputy would call it in as a tornado. We continued to watch the wall cloud for a good 25 minutes and it slowly organized better. The wall cloud really got it's act together when it crossed the Brown County Line into Schuyler County and started to rotate. We went NE on Route 24 and ended up on the North end of Rushville at the same exact spot where we were before. While the wall cloud was just West of  Rushville, ILX issued a tornado warning on our cell based upon the report that was called in by Scott Kampas. When the wall cloud was just to the NW of Rushville, it rapidly began to rotate. At this point there were two wall clouds visible as the cell  possibly split into two storms. The Southern wall cloud continued to rotate violently and we thought that it would soon produce a tornado. We watched this violently rotating wall cloud pass just to our North and then it became rain wrapped.  Luckily it did not produce a tornado because it would have hit the North side of Rushville without the tornado sirens being activated. We could not follow the storm NE on Route 24 without getting cored. We had no choice but to drop SE and cross the river at Beardstown and the cell began to weaken soon after and then become part of a line of storms. This was the first real chase of the year and the earliest that I have ever chased Central Illinois ever. 

 

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Copyright  © 2006 Mark Sefried