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Paw Paw, Illinois tornado - June 13
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I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. This page is a detailed account of the biggest threat to my photography and video operation that I had to battle daily to just barely survive, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem facing all of my colleagues as well. |
I arrived at Sublette, IL just as storms were firing to the immediate west. I followed a storm east from there, which displayed outflow-dominant features for much of its life. As the storm crossed I-39, however, a channel of strong inflow became established as the storm started hooking in under a ragged wall cloud. Just east of the town of Paw Paw, a tornadic debris cloud spun up under the wall cloud, lofting tree branches into the air:
The tornado persisted for several minutes, but a funnel never condensed in. Following this brief tornadic phase, the storm quickly became outflow dominant across all flanks. Several large gustnadoes spun up.
The outflow from the storm surged south and east as new storms went up along this boundary. None could overcome the undercutting outflow to establish surface-based inflow, however, so I ended the chase at Morris, IL.
Looking west from near Lisbon:
Looking east from Pontiac:
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