March 10th, 2026 Severe Threat

[A-L-E-K]

25 minutes ago, King James said:

Another thing to share that I thought was interesting is just as it passed to the south, every single window in the house fogged up

I figured you guys would know why.

But said to my wife “it’s got to be right there, we just can’t see it with the hail and wind”

that happened to our building a few days ago following a warm stretch and quick humid cool off, might have even posted about it lol

[A-L-E-K]

17 minutes ago, Chicago WX said:

This is the graph of my home weather station yesterday. You can see the lake breeze and then the recovery.

 

bumping for new page, this is aweseome

[Malacka11]

Yesterday was a very interesting chase. It was my first real chasing trip since getting hit by a satellite back on 4/4/23, so I was eager to have another shot at making safety my number one priority™. I was on the big boy sup for a little while as it cycled and then got to enjoy watching the entire storm tighten up from a very safe vantage point the whole time. It was really cool to observe broader and then tighter rotation show up again on velocity while looking at things in front of us, but then after a while it became fairly clear that there was most certainly a big ass tornado somewhere right in front of us that we couldn't see. 

  

Check this shit out. Despite a plethora of other notable things we came across, it was a bit lame to not actually really "see" the nader of course, especially since we were on it for over an hour with that sig ass signature on it. But just this morning, at the very end of the ~30 seconds of shit phone footage I managed to take, I came across this frame:

 

I surmise it hit a transformer or something literally a second before I ended the video. Note the tree to the left and how it's present in the picture above too; they're taken literally fifteen seconds apart.

Other observations include:

- Shortly before this point, we came across a crap load of massive hail still on the ground. At least good golf ball+ still sitting around in this sunny field in this particular cell's wake.

- Shortly before dark, right around the Indiana border,  the car (presumably another chaser) in front of us slowed way down and was just weird, then kept going. When we got to that point moments later, we registered that they'd been looking at one of those tree trunk remnants that's still a few meters tall standing right next to the road which was literally glowing orange and spitting embers. Kind of cool to come across a fresh lightning strike like that right in plain view, especially because the chase was essentially over at this point.

- On a more fucked note, on the way home on 65 or whatever, both sides of the highway were shut down at a certain point. I'm actually proud of how quickly it dawned on me that it's a bad sign that both north and southbound were shut down because my attention span was... spant at this point. A semi and an SUV laid overturned in the ditch-style median between lanes. We rolled down the windows and saw that all of the trees on either side of the highway were significantly damaged for a very defined ~100 yard swath centered around where the crashed vehicles were. Pulling out radarscope, this appeared to be almost exactly where the couplet had tracked just a little bit ago so I'm almost positive it was indeed the actual damage path of the tornado and not just wind damage. It was a very sobering way to end what was otherwise probably my safest, most incident-free chase so far. 

 

 

 

[frostfern]

2 hours ago, Jackstraw said:

Watched that storm on HiRes Sat throughout its life and that was the most impressive sustained updraft with intense rotation up through 50-60k ft I've seen in our sub. I'm also curious how that early lake breeze that moved inland and stalled right around the IKK area affected it. That storm sure looked like it got rooted into that stalled outflow boundary that collided with the warm front. Some extra enhancement there?

Thats a rare updraft for even TX hail country to be juggling 5-6 inchers 5 miles in the air. Truly epic updraft.

I think the lake breeze might have helped it turn right.  As soon as it did it was back in action.  The low level jet ramped up by 5-10mph or so also at the time.  I’m sure there will be studies.

[frostfern]

https://youtube.com/shorts/L0u2cw4FUhE?si=ddUD9eIfsM5pJCZa

Video of flash flooding and accumulated hail in Grand Rapids, MI last night.  Don’t know how to embed the video.

 

[King James]

This close

[CheeselandSkies]

39 minutes ago, Malacka11 said:

Yesterday was a very interesting chase. It was my first real chasing trip since getting hit by a satellite back on 4/4/23, so I was eager to have another shot at making safety my number one priority™. I was on the big boy sup for a little while as it cycled and then got to enjoy watching the entire storm tighten up from a very safe vantage point the whole time. It was really cool to observe broader and then tighter rotation show up again on velocity while looking at things in front of us, but then after a while it became fairly clear that there was most certainly a big ass tornado somewhere right in front of us that we couldn't see. 

  

Check this shit out. Despite a plethora of other notable things we came across, it was a bit lame to not actually really "see" the nader of course, especially since we were on it for over an hour with that sig ass signature on it. But just this morning, at the very end of the ~30 seconds of shit phone footage I managed to take, I came across this frame:

I surmise it hit a transformer or something literally a second before I ended the video. 

Other observations include:

- Shortly before this point, we came across a crap load of massive hail still on the ground. At least good golf ball+ still sitting around in this sunny field in this particular cell's wake.

- Shortly before dark, right around the Indiana border,  the car (presumably another chaser) in front of us slowed way down and was just weird, then kept going. When we got to that point moments later, we registered that they'd been looking at one of those tree trunk remnants that's still a few meters tall standing right next to the road which was literally glowing orange and spitting embers. Kind of cool to come across a fresh lightning strike like that right in plain view, especially because the chase was essentially over at this point.

- On a more fucked note, on the way home on 65 or whatever, both "lanes" of the highway were shut down at a certain point. I'm actually proud of how quickly it dawned on me that it's a bad sign that both sides of the road were shut down because my attention span was... spant at this point. A semi and an SUV laid overturned in the ditch-style median between lanes. We rolled down the windows and saw that all of the trees on either side of the highway were significantly damaged for a very defined ~100 yard swath centered around where the crashed vehicles were. Pulling out radarscope, this appeared to be almost exactly where the couplet had tracked just a little bit ago so I'm almost positive it was indeed the actual damage path of the tornado and not just wind damage. It was a very sobering way to end what was otherwise probably my safest, most incident-free chase so far. 

 

 

 

Absolutely textbook "horseshoe" base and monster RFD cut in that first image.

I didn't give the potential for recovery enough credit, I assumed once the lake breeze boundary pushed through that would be sayonara for any supercell in the vicinity. Got on a cell just as it fired north of Galesburg and it looked briefly promising and went tornado-warned for a little while, but a whole bunch of updrafts went up all around and it quickly turned into a mess (potential for that was always there given the boundary-parallel flow, but I had hoped the capping would keep it in check).

[frostfern]

Large “hailbergs” from last night’s storm in Grand Rapids.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CMgnYijVc/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Edit:  Does anyone know how to embed links?  A long time ago it used to be easy but the site has changed.

[A-L-E-K]

just post the image address

[frostfern]

1 minute ago, A-L-E-K said:

just post the image address

Thanks.  I would know how on my PC at home, but I’m an idiot boomer with iphone at work.

[A-L-E-K]

sick picture, usually see those type of scenes in high alpine climos where heavy hail storms are more common

[frostfern]

1 hour ago, A-L-E-K said:

sick picture, usually see those type of scenes in high alpine climos where heavy hail storms are more common

It was only 1-2 inches deep on average where it landed directly, but flood waters washed it into these thick deposits in low laying areas.  The temperature was also only in the 30s so it didn’t have time to melt.  It just floated down the streets and collected.

I think the skew-t would show some incredible temperature inversions north of the front last night.  Wind and pressure time series would also be cool to see where downdrafts generated gravity waves.  The wind shifts were on the order of 30 mph one direction, then 30 mph the opposite direction.  Easy to confuse with rotation couplets.  There were some in the Chicago area too with the initial elevated supercell there.

[frostfern]

4 hours ago, Malacka11 said:

Yesterday was a very interesting chase. It was my first real chasing trip since getting hit by a satellite back on 4/4/23, so I was eager to have another shot at making safety my number one priority™. I was on the big boy sup for a little while as it cycled and then got to enjoy watching the entire storm tighten up from a very safe vantage point the whole time. It was really cool to observe broader and then tighter rotation show up again on velocity while looking at things in front of us, but then after a while it became fairly clear that there was most certainly a big ass tornado somewhere right in front of us that we couldn't see. 

  

Check this shit out. Despite a plethora of other notable things we came across, it was a bit lame to not actually really "see" the nader of course, especially since we were on it for over an hour with that sig ass signature on it. But just this morning, at the very end of the ~30 seconds of shit phone footage I managed to take, I came across this frame:

 

I surmise it hit a transformer or something literally a second before I ended the video. Note the tree to the left and how it's present in the picture above too; they're taken literally fifteen seconds apart.

Other observations include:

- Shortly before this point, we came across a crap load of massive hail still on the ground. At least good golf ball+ still sitting around in this sunny field in this particular cell's wake.

- Shortly before dark, right around the Indiana border,  the car (presumably another chaser) in front of us slowed way down and was just weird, then kept going. When we got to that point moments later, we registered that they'd been looking at one of those tree trunk remnants that's still a few meters tall standing right next to the road which was literally glowing orange and spitting embers. Kind of cool to come across a fresh lightning strike like that right in plain view, especially because the chase was essentially over at this point.

- On a more fucked note, on the way home on 65 or whatever, both sides of the highway were shut down at a certain point. I'm actually proud of how quickly it dawned on me that it's a bad sign that both north and southbound were shut down because my attention span was... spant at this point. A semi and an SUV laid overturned in the ditch-style median between lanes. We rolled down the windows and saw that all of the trees on either side of the highway were significantly damaged for a very defined ~100 yard swath centered around where the crashed vehicles were. Pulling out radarscope, this appeared to be almost exactly where the couplet had tracked just a little bit ago so I'm almost positive it was indeed the actual damage path of the tornado and not just wind damage. It was a very sobering way to end what was otherwise probably my safest, most incident-free chase so far. 

 

 

 

Did you get a long video?  It would be so cool to see that sped up a few times.  Classic RFD wrap-up.

[sbnwx85]

Fun footnote from last night storms: SBN on the northwest side of South Bend gusted to 60 mph as the supercell collapsed south of the city.

[nvck]

15 hours ago, Radtechwxman said:

Did you get on storm later further east or did you see the Kankakee tornado and massive hail? We were on that storm by Pontiac. Got a brief touchdown with wickedly rotating wall cloud. Then storm just quit. We followed it a while. It got an elevated/outflow look and look terrible on radar and I figured it was getting into the more stable air north of boundary. We headed west and boy was that a mistake. One of my biggest chase mistakes of my career. This will sting a while. 

funnily enough, we did almost exactly the same thing. Got to Pontiac well before CI, hung out for a while and watched as that cell came up from the SW, went west of town and chased it through town. Didn't see the ground circulation on the touchdown, but wow that was some incredible motion on the wall cloud. Thought for sure it'd drop something big. Followed it east to Emington, and then the people I was chasing with wanted to head west, waiting for the Peoria cells to pop off. After getting back to Pontiac, we saw that cell really ramp back up on radar and absolutely booked it east, intercepting near Wichert IL, except by that point it was completely rain-wrapped, and we couldn't get ahead of it, so just followed it a few miles to the south until we finally got a couple miles east, where we saw the Wheatfield and Knox tornadoes. So no, missed the big Kankakee tor and mega-hail. Also missed the Lake Village tor (although we almost drove into it)

[nvck]

7 hours ago, Chicago WX said:

This is the graph of my home weather station yesterday. You can see the lake breeze and then the recovery.

 

I know some people doing research w/ lake-breeze fronts and their influence on CI, this could be really useful for a case study 

[nvck]

gif i made of some stills from a ~90sec video of the tornado in wheatfield yesterday. this was about 4 miles ESE of the city, looking northwest. the lightning was frequent enough to be able to pull a good amount of frames. 

[andyhb]

That IKK storm yesterday produced multiple record breaking hailstones for IL in addition to the multiple strong tornadoes, including one that was apparently nearly 8".

[King James]

You guys forget but we also got that foot of snow in like 4 hours back in October

Extreme weather capital of the USA

[Malacka11]

@frostfern I only have one 18-second long video that both of the other screenshots I shared were taken from. The transformer flash is visible at the end, barely; please don't mind my terrible camera work 
 

Btw maybe I'm reaching but what's going on at the far left end of the base there? 

[Chicago WX]

1 hour ago, nvck said:

I know some people doing research w/ lake-breeze fronts and their influence on CI, this could be really useful for a case study 

If it can be useful, certainly pass it along.

These are the links to my weather station: https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KILKANKA33/table/2020-10-21/2020-10-21/daily

https://ambientweather.net/dashboard/7bf27a3c338d927765d0080306d7c4a9