The
first storm chase of the year and
the likelihood of it being a
nighttime chase was very
real. Ryan and I decided
that we would try this chase
anyway and just stay at a safe
distance from any dangerous
storm. With Ryan working
until 2:00pm, we would have plenty
time to determine where our
intercept point would be with any
storm that developed. All of
the weather models were saying
there would be storms around St.
Louis and would initiate sometime
between 5:00pm to 8:00pm.
Image to my surprise when a storm
breaks out in south central
Missouri just after 1:00pm and
tracks toward the Mississippi
River. I sent a text to Ryan
and told him not to waste any time
after work as we had a storm that
had already developed. By
2:30pm we were on the road.
After weighing the options, we
chose to play the storm on the
Illinois side of the river.
We wrapped around the east side of
St. Louis and grabbed Highway 3
south. We chose to take a
road in the Mississippi River
valley called Bluff Road as we
were familiar with that road and
would have a great view of the
storm coming at us from the
Missouri side of the river over
the big river valley. We
eventually ended up at Prairie Du
Rocher as our viewing point.
The storm looked good
structurally, and at one point had
a decent wall cloud, but it never
did really take off. The
surface winds as we sat were less
than 5mph. We watched it go
by and watched a couple of smaller
cells go by that were behind the
first cell, all with little or no
velocity.
We eventually decided to backtrack
to Route 3 again and we played the
back and forth game, north, then
south, then back north. We'd
watch the storms and we'd start to
see a bit of rotation and move
toward the storm and then the
rotation would go away. By
now, daylight had vanished and we
were now moving around in
darkness. We saw a storm up
by Red Bud, IL that seemed to be a
bit stronger than the others, so
we moved up to the edge of that
storm to watch it go by.
Oops, a bit too close as we heard
BANG. Then more bangs.
Went from nothing to hailing
golfballs in a couple
seconds. A quick exit back
south as we got pelted with
golfballs. Counted about 12
hail dents in the car today.
After
a phone conversation with Brian
Stertz, we decided to target a
storm that was coming toward
Perryville, MO. We had
plenty of time, so we contemplated
either staying on the Illinois
Side of the River and watching the
storm from the River Valley, or
crossing the River back into
Missouri and watching the storm
come into Perryville, MO.
After a lot of discussion on the
way, the positives of the Missouri
side won out and we worked our way
back to I-55. We stopped
again in Perryville to check out
the path and data. We parked next
to our friend, Chris Higgins in
the McDonalds Parking Lot just to
say "Hi".
After checking our data again, we
decided the path of the storm
could come too close at the
Perryville exit, so we moved south
to the next exit and positioned
ourselves facing north.
After a few minutes, we decided we
were a bit too far south, so we
worked our way back
northward. As we approached
the Perryville exit again, we
began seeing many power flashes
just to the left of the highway
north of the Perryville
exit. We attempted a few
pictures and then back in the
car. We exited the Highway
at the Perryville exit again and
made the choice to follow the
storm back north on Highway
51. We knew the path of the
storm would cross this Highway, so
we remained cautious as we moved
up to the tornado as we monitored
the power flashes. The
tornado crossed the Highway in
front of us knocking down power
lines and destroying a house
blowing the debris across the road
ending any forward progress.
There
were several other vehicles that
were caught right behind the
tornado crossing. We were
told the occupant of the house was
OK. We saw our friend Tyler
Schlitt pull up and provide some
assistance during the first few
minutes before police
arrived. Meanwhile, Ryan
jumped out of the car and climbed
the hill next to the road to get a
view of the departing
tornado. I joined him and
with a couple lightning bolts, we
got a glimpse
of the wedge tornado continuing on
its way over the Mississippi River
into Illinois.
As
the emergency personnel began
arriving, we decided to leave this
area before we were trapped by all
the vehicles. As we retreated
and worked our way back to I-55 for
the ride back home, we branched off
to access the roads north off of
Highway 51. Every one of the
roads ended up being blocked off due
to emergency vehicles because of the
damage and we were forced to turn
around. We got back on I-55
north and found ourselves in another
road block as the Highway was
blocked due to debris and overturned
cars and trucks. Eventually,
they got the road clear enough to
let the cars clear as they emptied
the highway on the now closed
highway so the massive clean up
could begin. This is the
location of the one death from this
tornado.
Total Trips - 1
* Total Miles - 324
|
Click
on the link below to see video of some
of these storms.
|
February 28, 2017 
