Thanks to a merciless cap, action in Iowa didn’t start yesterday until shortly before dark, and it never came close to living up to its potential. The RUC majorly underforecast convective inhibition, resulting in a lot of broken chasers’ hearts around Waterloo, mine included.
Storms finally did fire to the east, and a beautiful supercell crossed the Mississippi River after dark at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where Bill and I have overnighted. We wound up on another cell that slowly organized and went supercellular, following in the first storm’s track. There were a number of storms in a cluster that showed rotation, but none of them put down tornadoes.
Today’s event looks to be widespread, and Michigan could very possibly see some action. But Bill and I are looking toward western Illinois. Galesburg presently looks good, or maybe Davenport. The storms are already getting their acts together. Time to sign off, check out of this hotel, and get on the road.
Galesburg is where i live, we got some a microburst south of town where i live that was measured at 75 mph, some smaller hail, and over toward monmouth and warren county there was a tornado warning for a hour or so. Did you guys end up finding something over in warren co, the reports just showed large hail and straight line winds?
We were never in Warren County. We dropped down I-39 from I-80 to south of Normal, intercepted our storm, then tracked east with it into Indiana. We did consider Galesburg at first, but the RUC showed that the area wasn’t likely to produce a tornado, beyond perhaps a brief, unpredictable spin-up. Surface winds to the east looked better–not great, but at least a bit more hopeful.