Chicago Storm

Ending up heading west later yesterday afternoon, to make a play on the OFB area turned triple point, with the cold front sliding southeast. The environment in this area was nice...With high CAPE, pooling of moisture with around 70F DP's and good shear. A stronger surface wind flow was lacking, however. Sat in Rochelle for a while with CU bubbling along the OFB/triple point just west. A storm quickly went up and tried to beat the cap, going severe and up to around ~55k tops within 15mins or so. Quickly headed WSW to make a play on it and reach it just west of Amboy, but it quickly died shortly after. Ended up calling it a chase at that point, with activity further west near the IL/IA border having little to no tor threat, and also struggling.

This MCS that has regenerated this morning and early afternoon looks likely to push SE/SSE alight the instability gradient in place, which runs down along the IL/IN border area. It has featured embedded areas of rotation at times in the SW/S metro, with a few wall cloud reports. Overall severe reports have been surprising low though, given wind and hail sigs on radar. Re-development of quality surface based activity later this afternoon and evening in a very nice environment ahead of the cold front and near the OFB across Iowa, S. WI/N. IL looks questionable...With slightly rising heights, subsidence in the wake of the current S/W, no formidable wave close upstream and a cap in place.

Looked good this morning...good enough for me to head west to Dixon. Warm front/triple point looked like the main play...With decent instability, good moisture and great shear in place, plus much more clearing then expected. Then when I got out to Dixon and was sitting there for a bit, clouds and rain magically redeveloped and streamed back north across W. IL and further north, killing the threat.

Indeed...

April '19 the 6th snowiest April on record for Chicago... 1. 13.6" - 1938 2. 10.7" - 1970 3. 10.6" - 1982 4. 10.0" - 1975 5. 8.8" - 1961 6. 7.9" - 2019 7. 6.9" - 1910 8. 6.6" - 1926 9. 6.4" - 1920 10. 4.8" - 1936

Downtown Davenport, IA under a FFE due to levee failure. Levee has failed and is flooding the downtown area at this time.

LOT dropping the ball with headlines once again...In this case flood headlines. Should have been under a flood watch for this multi-day period. Had 0.50-1,00" precip across the area on Saturday, with soils saturated from that. Then round one Sun night-Mon afternoon dropped 1-2" of rain, which cause widespread flooding (field, yard, some prone roads) and a rise in area creeks/rivers some some in flood now. This second main round coming in from now through tomorrow morning will easily drop another 2-4" across the area, with locally higher amounts possible if things pan out correctly. Then there's a third round on Thursday, though that is still up in the air rainfall amount wise.

Widespread 1-2" rainfall totals across the area from the heavy rain and t'storms last night and this morning. ORD picked up 1.54" with that first round. The second round from tomorrow morning into Wednesday morning should drop another 1-3" across the area, then a third round for Wednesday night into Thursday.

Surprisingly still have a few remnant piles left.

Finished with 5.5” here. .

RFD finished with 3.7” .

Looks like the main axis will end up with widespread totals in the 3-6" range, with isolated 6"+ totals.

Haven’t been home for this one yet, but word is 1.5” there as of a bit ago. Has been snowing nicely from MBY to ORD corridor for a while now. .

R/S line pretty much stationary along I-88 now looks like.

Widespread TSSN in NW. IA currently. A couple of 3-4" reports in that area a bit ago as well.