The Six State Supercell, Part 2

(Continued from previous post) Seventy-eight miles lie between the Mississippi River crossover at Louisiana, Missouri, and Springfield, Illinois. That’s as the supercell flies, according to my DeLorme Street Atlas. The shortest route by road tacks on another ten miles–a trip of maybe an hour-and-a quarter, provided Bill’s doing the driving.

During that time, we worked our way northeast to the northern edge of the storm, then caught I-72 east for another rendezvous. As we neared Springfield, I could see a pronounced area of rotation just to our south on the radar. We were tracking with it as it moved gradually toward the Interstate. That kind of arrangement could have been delightful during the daytime, with good visibility. In the blackness of the night, however, it was a bit unsettling. Looking out the window, I could see the moon shining through a rift in the clouds. Just exactly what was this storm doing, and where were we, really, in relation to its action area?

With the rotation closing in on the radar for an apparent crossing just up ahead, Bill and I finally concluded it would be wise for us to pull off at the next exit and conduct as good a visual assessment of the storm as we could. That decision proved to be our smartest move of the day.*

Stepping outside our vehicle and scanning the sky, I could see jumbled clouds and large patches of clear air. But to the east, that lowering…was that a wall cloud? Maybe. So hard to tell.

I headed back toward the vehicle, turning my back just long enough to miss what came next. I heard Bill yell, “Whoa! Power flash!” He had seen a funnel illuminated by arcing transformers in the act of crossing the highway a mile or two ahead.

We hopped back into the Suburban and blasted east. Maybe a mile down the road, we saw signs blown down, several trucks overturned in the median, definite indications that a big wind had blown through just a minute or two prior.

“Bill, if we hadn’t stopped, we would have been in that,” I said. “Yeah, we would have,” he replied. Sobering thought. Backlit by lightning, a large, low wall cloud hovered over Springfield. From what I could see, it looked plenty robust, nothing I’d ever have wanted to find myself under. I breathed an earnest prayer for the safety of the residents of Springfield.

As we arrived in the town proper, tornado warnings yammered about more touchdowns toward the east. Opting instead for I-55, we punched north through a blinding and seemingly interminable rain core. Eventually we made our way back into clear air. To our southeast, the storm was still putting down tornadoes, but who wants to chase such a beast in the night?

My chase partner, for one. When we got up to Chenoa, Bill hopped off of I-55 and headed east down US 24. “It’ll keep us out of Chicago,” was his rationale, but I knew what he was up to. There are times when I’m not quite sure whether to admire Bill’s tenacity or chloroform him and stuff him in the trunk. One thing’s for sure: he brings color, interest, and value to a chase, and he knows large chunks of territory across the US very well. We’ve chased together for twelve years now. Our partnership is at times a study in opposites, but it’s worked pretty well. We’ve traveled thousands of miles, endured plenty of busts, and wound up in a few situations that scared the crap out of me. We”ve also seen our share of tornadoes, and we do better and learn more each year.

Anyway, off we headed to the east for yet another encounter with the supercell as it approached Indiana. We caught up with it right at the border. Just east of the town of Sheldon, Illinois, pea-sized hail began to pelt our vehicle. It grew rapidly into hard, quarter-sized stones. “I hate hail,” said Bill. I felt much the same way, particularly with rotation showing directly overhead on the radar.

Thankfully, nothing worse than the hail and driving rain materialized. As the cell moved off to the northeast, we made our way through Kentland and Goodland, then caught I-65 north. Passing by Renselaar, we caught up with the tail end of the storm and pulled aside to watch a large lowering move over the town. But the storm”s tornadic activity had ended back in central Illinois. Renselaar dodged the bullet.

As Bill and I crossed the border into Michigan near New Buffalo, we could see our storm still spitting out lightning to the southeast. It was now just an hour or two from its last gasp near Jackson, Michigan, nearly 800 miles from where it had first muscled up through the troposphere in northeast Oklahoma. During its seventeen-and-a-half-hour lifespan, it had established itself as the baddest of the bad. In an outbreak that produced 140 tornadoes, it had contributed more than twenty, two of which wrought F2 damage in the capital city of Illinois. Traversing an unprecedented six states, it had set a record for distance, traveling farther and lasting longer than the parent supercell of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado and other historic, long-distance storms.

The Six State Supercell had enjoyed an illustrious career. But it was winding down, and so were we. About the time its last lightning bolt lit the sky in southeast Michigan, Bill was back home in bed with his wife, and I myself was laying my head on my pillow. For storm and chasers alike, it had been one heck of a day.

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* Addendum: Subsequent to making this post, I checked my Street Atlas and determined that Bill and I got off at exit 91, Old Route 54/Wabash Avenue. The Lincoln WFO report shows that the first tornado crossed just a mile farther up the road, at mile marker 92. It was half a mile wide at that point. Had we kept going instead of pulling over when we did, we’d almost certainly have been blown off the road. God was looking after us.