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June 1st, 1999 - El Paso, IL 1st Tornado.
Chase
#2 ..... This chase was a day before my 6th grade graduation. It was
exactly 2 months after my grandfather passed away and there happened to
be tornado watches issued as a broken squall line full of embedded
supercells were tracking ENE into Central and Northern Illinois from
Iowa and Missouri. We traveled down I 55 as the norm and cut over on US
24 to I 39 and hung out around El Paso. As the line neared we saw a
menacing shelf cloud approaching and cautiously headed west on a
country road just north of El Paso.
As
the above video shows, we were facing west at the approaching storm. We
inched west as the line approached and then punched south out ahead of
the line as we kept noticing SLC's (Scary Looking Clouds) toward the
southwest and the lightning picking up. Again we were without radar and
timely reports from the National Weather Service so it was all eyes. We
finally got word of a tornado warning for the area we were in so we
parked off a road just off I 39 and noticed an interesting feature just
west of us.
Definitely
a lowering. Could be a tornado? Couldn't tell since visibility was so
poor. HOWEVER that all changed when a flash of lightning lit up a clear
small cone tornado about a mile or two to the west and moving closer. I
was still a rookie and knew I was in trouble. I didn't freak out though,
I stayed calm and held the camera as we bailed east on that county road
and took shelter behind a large machine shed. It was the only shelter
we could find and we thought we would ride it out there for better or
for worse. Now looking back at this I have to say what we did was
incredibly stupid and am absolutely at fault for biting more than we
could chew with a wrapped up embedded HP supercell. However this was a
MAJOR learning experience for me as it taught me that tornadoes can
form on the front of the line and not the southwest corner of a
supercell. Also it showed that you wont always have that great
picturesque tornado from 10 miles away.
As
you can clearly see visibility was absolute terrible, the wind was
blowing at borderline hurricane strength and we needed shelter bad. We
ducked behind the building and hoped for the best. After a few
harrowing minutes we emerged unscathed but the area around us had minor
damage. It wasn't exactly a strong tornado but it was definitely enough
to roll our car.
Looking
back we made a lot of mistakes which I attribute to inexperience. In my
opinion the only way you truly learn something is digging in elbow deep
and experiencing it with your own eyes.
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