A late season storm system brought the possibility of tornadoes into Illinois.  My son Ryan and I did not hesitate on this opportunity. We watched the models intently for a couple days prior in anticipation of a rare December tornado opportunity.  As we do many times the day of the event, we placed all of our faith in the HRRR weather model as it showed a string of cells would line up late in the afternoon from about Quincy, Illinois down to just east of the St. Louis, Missouri area.   My son and I made our plans to leave about 10:30am even though the storms were not forecast until mid to late afternoon.  This would give us time for a leisurely lunch in the target area and a chance to thoroughly go through the updated data.  We also made an early morning call to our friend Tyler Schlitt with an invite to join us and he accepted for the trip.

We left around 10:30am and made our way toward Jacksonville, Illinois as our initial target area.  Our plan was to have the typical Pizza Hut Buffet for our superstitious lunch as the days that we do tend to produce tornadoes later.  Sad to find out that Pizza Hut Restaurants in Jacksonville do not have a lunch buffet on Saturday.   Went another block up the road and found a Ponderosa Steakhouse to have lunch. 

Had a relaxing lunch, browsed through current data, and watched the radar.  At the first sign of  radar returns coming in, we left the restaurant and began working our way west on Interstate 72 toward them.  We eyed one of the growing cells that was coming up toward us from the southwest.  As we approached the Illinois River, we took the last exit before going west over the bridge and worked our way south on the edge of the Illinois River valley until we found a wide open view of the approaching storm coming over the hill on the opposite side of the river valley.  We were a bit confused as we saw the storm coming over the tree line with a solid, rotating wall cloud, but yet, no official National Weather Service warning of any kind.  We are quite sure what we observed was our first tornado of the day.  Because we were unable to see the ground due to the tree line, this tornado will probably go down as unconfirmed. 

It went through a second cycle of dropping another funnel (tornado) without any sort of official warning. 

As the storm passed by us, the third cycle of the storm put down a confirmed tornado just north of Interstate 72 near Valley City, Illinois as we watched it now in the river valley.

As the tornadic storm continued to the northeast, we got back in the car and drove back north crossing over Interstate 72 and continued on the road north that hugged the eastern bluffs of the Illinois River paralleling the storm.  It continued to rotate hard all the way to just before Beardstown where it wrapped up again to put down a very picturesque tornado.

 

As we entered the city of Beardstown, we turned east on 125 and discovered what the white debris was you can see in picture 5 above.  It blew the roof off of a building on the east side of town.

We continued east, then turned north on 78 and worked our way toward Bath, Illinois.  The wall cloud continued to spin very hard and as we worked our way north.  The storm cycles again and puts down another tornado.

 

It lifts and shortly after that, the widest tornado of the day and probably the strongest of the day forms.

On the north side of Matanzas Beach, Illinois, we turned east to insure we stayed out of the path of the storm.  We saw another cycle as we made a jog north, then east again through the country roads.

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After this cycle of the storm, we let this storm go as we noticed another storm to the southwest was gaining strength and was just east of the path as the storm we were leaving.  This was an easy catch as we moved into position to watch the storm coming at us, now at dusk.  We watched along the side of the road with a local firefighter.  There was a wall cloud to start, but soon, we could no longer see any circulation anywhere.  The storm got right up next to us, so we decided to make a move south to let the storm pass and after passing continue to follow the storm again.  The fire fighter pulls away and we start our move south.  No sooner do we start moving, we're stopped in our tracks as we notice an unexpected spin up about to cross the road right in front of us.  It quickly gains strength and puts down a strong tornado.

 After having this tornado pass within 200 yards from us and being soaked from the rain as we were blasted with the rear flank downdraft, we got back in the car and tried to follow the tornado.  Unfortunately, the tornado was solidly on the ground doing major damage and had the east bound roads blocked with downed power poles, power lines, and trees.  We ended up pulling over to the side of the road as we could see the tornado off in the distance with the lightning bolts.  Tyler did some time lapse shots on his camera trying to catch anything else interesting in the sky.

After the photography stop on the road, we worked north to 136 to go east.  There was power pole damage with multiple power poles down as we crossed the damage path again, but 136 was passable.  We worked our way back to the Interstate 155 and Interstate 55 for the drive home.

Was a very unexpected result to a December tornado chase.  Definitely in our top two for the year.

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