It's getting late and I'm getting very tired, so I apologize in advance if any of this seems really short.

My brother Josh and I met up with Joel around 4:30 and took off down I-74 toward the Springfield area. The central/southern portion of Illinois was under a moderate outlook and we were initially disappointed with the setup. I think the main reason for chasing today was to put the new Verizon air card to work. Wow am I glad I bought that! What an asset. There were a few tornado warned cells, one nearing Springfield, as we were around Peoria. The other cell had a VERY nice hook, but it appeared as if it was going to be killed by the mini squall line following it. We were crossing our fingers it would hold off.


The cell that went over Springfield pretty much crapped out, so our agenda was to cruise down I-55 and flank the monster supercell that was coming in from the west. We took the Auburn exit about 7:15-7:20 and we could see a VERY impressive base backlit by lightning. Things were looking very, very good. We finally pulled off on a little dirt side road and watched this beast scream at us. We could see the inflow above our heads also. The clouds were screaming toward this beast.


Once again, I'm not too proud of these shots. But, there wasn't much I could do either. Josh drove his Jimmy, and I'm used to just hopping in my truck and taking off. So, I left all my tripods and window mounts in my truck...220 some odd miles back to the north. Whoops. So, my settings on all these pictures were 1/15s, ISO 1600 @ f/4...all handheld. You aren't going to yield very good results with those settings. But, witnessing this monster was good enough. Unfortunately though, right as we got up on it, the cell to the west undercut this cell and it morphed into this gigantic plow. This was by FAR the best shelf I have EVER seen, and probably will ever see unless I eventually catch one down south one of these years.

Here is a radar grab saved just a bit before we took the Auburn exit. That notch on the return was right where we would eventually be. Perfect spot once again.




This is when it got interesting. We kept noting an interesting feature toward where a tornado would have been, in the notch where the supercell met with the merging cell to its west.


Incredible structure on this thing. Too bad it was undercut, though. Things could have been much more interesting!




Look very closely in this shot below. We are 99.9% convinced I captured the Auburn tornado. This picture was taken at 7:37. In the reports, the tornado was apparently called in at 7:38.


 PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LINCOLN IL
739 PM CDT FRI MAY 30 2008

..TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON...
..DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
..REMARKS..

0738 PM TORNADO 4 W AUBURN 39.58N 89.82W
05/30/2008 SANGAMON IL LAW ENFORCEMENT

Cropped and highly contrasted. If this isn't a tornado, this is the world's best decoy ever.


We were all just watching in awe at this unbelievable structure. We met Brandon Sullivan on this road also. That's the first time we met a fellow StormTrack member on the road. That was pretty cool.




This thing was almost directly over our heads now.


We blasted south right after this shot to get to another right behind this one that also had a hook. But, that was an unsuccessful attempt. This whole system was dropping so much lightning it almost made me nervous to be outside a few times. We pulled off to watch some more half-ass lowerings. We were about to head for home, so why not. I tried getting some of the cg's out the side window, but that didn't work out so well. I held the shutter open for 15 seconds and hand-held it once again.






So, that was it for the chase. Great day for my brother Josh! This was his first real chase and I'd say it was a good way to start!

As we pulled in the driveway back home, I saw some more flashes a little ways to the south. Since I'm still hot after some good lightning shots this year, I went back out again. Didn't really grab anything too great, but it was still fun.



Pretty pictureesque here. I was really loving the stars above the clouds.




These things would start/stop again like someone was flipping a switch. They'd light up once every 2 seconds, then go to absolutely nothing again within a few minutes. They would keep doing this the hour and a half I sat here.

A little longer exposure after the action stopped the first time.








2008 has been a pretty good year so far! It appears there could be a chase day or two this coming week also. This is starting to get fun now.