CheeselandSkies

13 hours ago, Baum said:

Seems awhile since we’ve had a cool wet June around here.

Long as we don't repeat the endless smoky skies and hazardous air quality of June, 2023.

21Z RAP box soundings are nuts. 730 m2/s2 inflow layer SRH.

18Z NAM and RRFS-A (I know, I know, but they're the only mesoscale models that go out that far) edged a little bit north with the warm sector for Wednesday evening.

I couldn't chase last Thursday due to being in Cleveland on a family trip (probably would have ended up on the still-tornadic relative junk in western IL anyway), but it'd be nice to have the target not be south of I-80 for once since I rarely can take PTO on short notice from my job.

Annoyed I will be missing the severe threats in MBY due to a planned trip to Cleveland to visit family tomorrow through Friday.

Models give some hope for a return to activity on or about June 14-15, at least for northwestern portions of the sub. Will have been a very long four weeks by that time.

It really seems like a mixed bag with ENSO. Feels like in my adult life we've had wet Ninos, dry Ninos, wet Ninas, dry Ninas, warm Ninos, cold Ninos, warm Ninas (most dramatically 2012), and cold Ninas. The strength and timing/speed of transition (TNI) makes the biggest difference.

Reupping this thread as several months later I found a frame in my GoPro footage that shows the left edge of the Cullison-Iuka tornado. This is looking north from NW 10th Street northeast of Cullison. It literally was just this one frame, though. Too bad there wasn't more lightning back-lighting under the base. Nearly all of it was at anvil level.
 

Chased this day and intercepted the supercell south of Kalona. Clipped the RFD core heading north and then east to keep up with it, getting numerous subtle but noticeable hail pockmarks on the driver's side and hood of my vehicle. The Riverside tornado was occurring off to our south at about this time, I told my chase partner to keep an eye to his right based on the radar presentation but we couldn't see anything through the rain. Ended up with a distant glimpse of a rope funnel as we approached West Liberty from the south. Chasers who were closer confirmed a ground circulation with this, although the NWS's survey has the only other tornado occurring a few minutes earlier and seemingly a bit further west, southwest of Downey.
 

Southward-moving central WI storms were severe warned into far northwest Dane County, but sputtered into Madison on fumes and have now ceased to exist.

15 hours ago, Geoboy645 said:

We are going to be thanking that we had the extremely wet March and April here because yikes. Between that and the ridge to the N causing fire weather up in Canada, wouldn't be surprised if we June 2023, again.

God, I hope not. I barely knew what an air quality advisory was until that year. Then we had them in effect for something like 3 weeks straight.

4 hours ago, Chicago Storm said:

Just got back from guiding a storm chasing tour over the past week.

Easily the worst stretch I've experienced since I started doing these back in 2021.

Gambled on an early to mid-April tour and we lucked out with a couple of decent storms on relatively low-key/conditional days. It was guided by Trey Greenwood and Ethan Moriarty (YouTubers Convective Chronicles and June First, respectively), so it was a lot of fun getting to hang out and talk storms with those guys.
 

However ironically the best was on my way home (I had actually cancelled my flight plans and shortened my time on the tour to drive out to OKC instead, which was the reason I was in my vehicle and able to chase this day, also ironic for someone from Wisconsin I had started the day in Wichita and marathonned 9 hours to see a tornado in Minnesota):

Ya. AI ≠ "good."

Does the clearing now pushing from the eastern half of IA/NE MO into NW IL/SW WI mean anything or is it too little, too late? SPC pretty thoroughly chopped away our severe probabilities on the northern end with the 1630 update.

00Z HRRR: We're so back?

2 hours ago, TheNiño said:

No moderate risk on the day 2 so I’ll probably be wrong. But I still see high risk potential in the Springfield area tomorrow. I’m willing to take the weenie penalty if I’m wrong but at the very least there should be a moderate there. I don’t know I’m just some fucking guy.

I would agree with you if there was less of a signal for extensive morning convection on the CAMs, however...

it's an interesting disagreement between the mesoscale models (NAM, RAP) and the CAMs (3K NAM, HRRR). The former two build a very potent environment into east IA/N IL/even S WI late Monday afternoon/evening, which the latter two fail to do because of the impacts of the aforementioned incessant convection.

Seems like all the CAMs to come into range thus far (including 00Z HRRR) obliterate the warm sector north of about I-70 with incessant convection through midday. A couple days ago there was talk of an abnormally far east EML advection preventing this, what changed?

16 minutes ago, sbnwx85 said:

Reminds me of the story of the 1965 outbreak and Northern Indiana issued a blanket tornado warning for every county because it couldn’t keep up. Completely different set up and reasoning but still gives me a chuckle

IIRC Birmingham or Huntsville also did that during the evening of 4/3/74. James Spann essentially did that for 4/27/11 when he told his viewers in advance there were going to be so many tornadoes and warnings it would be tough for them to keep up, so to treat any storm that approaches as dangerous and take cover as if it had a tornado (which on that day in Alabama, it probably did).

Got this guy on Monday.
 

Was on a tornado-warned nasty green HP near Dodgeville/Barneveld/Mt. Horeb, WI Tuesday evening.

Other photos from recent chases in my storm chasing Flickr album:

https://flickr.com/photos/andywskies/albums/72157655308092622/

CAMS (apart from the ever-aggressive RRFS-A) have generally kept southern Wisconsin dry overnight, and the 00Z HRRR continues that trend. Not sure why were still in SPC's slight risk.

26 minutes ago, cyclone77 said:

SPC risk needs to be shaved off over northwest IL and eastern IA.  Will be a whiff east/southeast.

Yeah. I have to resist the temptation to chase based solely on that and the HRRR UH swaths, which are portrayed 50-100 miles north of any surface-based instability except maybe from north-central Indiana eastward.

2 hours ago, pen_artist said:

Good breakdown by Trey on the Kankakee supercell

 

So pumped I get to chase with him starting in a little over a week.

29 minutes ago, A-L-E-K said:

 

 

 

Honestly couldn't ask for a better look across all guidance for the start of my chase tour. Now I just have to hope the airports are still semi-functional by the 2nd. Heck, with that look on the models I'll hitchhike to OKC if need be.

On 3/15/2026 at 9:34 PM, cyclone77 said:

Funny that this evening we're dealing with a developing blizzard when 10 years ago on this date I was looking at this down by Good Hope IL.

 

Great shot showing the dramatic carved-out updraft structure. Possibly would have gotten this one except my chase partner couldn't leave work in Madison until 4. We got a brief look at the Trivoli tornado from the west edge of Hanna City, which I believe was produced from the same storm or one that evolved out of it after a merger.

We were not really expecting a tornado by that point in the chase as it had gotten dark and the storm had looked like junk on radar just minutes before, so we were rather spooked by the rapid turnaround and hightailed it out of there before we could get a better shot.

20 hours ago, A-L-E-K said:

Signs of a return to action in the extended?

Chase tour runs April 3-12!