6/12/2013 - Mt. Carroll, IL Supercell and Tornado

Wednesday was the first high risk in Illinois in many, many years. That, naturally, had me out the door to view what Mother Nature had in store. A few of us gathered at my house in the early-to-mid afternoon and targeted the area between Freeport and Lanark, IL where the greatest backed winds were progged by the models. As we approached our target region from the southeast, convection began to develop in all quadrants. It was then a matter of choosing which storm to latch onto ... we ended up following an initial storm up to the Rockford area, but it never really got its act together. The best looking storm at this time was along and south of the I-88 corridor, but we let that go since we were well north of the meaty storm and we didn't want to fight the Chicago 'burbs. At this point, we were somewhat disappointed with the way the setup was playing out. Alas, we turned west with an eye on storms approaching from Wisconsin and Iowa. We moseyed west on US-20 to Stockton, where we grabbed a quick bite and wondered whether it was worth sticking around for the storm(s) approaching along the Mississippi River. The area of extreme nw IL is not known for its good chase territory, so we were somewhat reluctant to venture north and west. Also, the storm we were going to intercept didn't look that great on radar. Nevertheless, a tornado warning was reissued, so we gave it a shot. We shot south out of Stockton, hoping to intercept the storm between Stockton and Mt. Carroll. This area is very beautiful country, but you might as well be chasing eastern Kentucky since it is hilly with lots of trees. We eventually took Elizabeth Rd. northwest to get a bit closer to the southeast-moving storm. We made it about 7-10 miles northwest and took in a view we were not expecting -- a fine looking supercell that ...  uhhh ... was producing a tornado! We perched ourselves wherever we could find an open spot in this tough chase terrain. We watched the tornado skip and jump across the landscape. We eventually had to bust southeast on Elizabeth Rd. to stay ahead of the approaching core and tornado. Once we got visual again near Mt. Carroll, the tornado had dissipated. The storm then began to suck on cold air -- likely outflow from the eastern storms. It became elevated and produced one of the more odd features I've ever seen -- a funnel that stretched north over the top of the cold dome. If you look closely in the pic and timelapse below you'll see the funnel. Anyway, below are some pics from Victor and I, as well as a timelapse of the scenes I was able to capture. The post concludes with a video from Matt Piechota of a segment of the EF2 tornado.

Beautiful tornadic supercell in extreme nw IL.

Note the vertical, then horizontal, funnel cloud!

Timelapse of scenes from the evening.

Matt Piechota's video of the tornado.