Storm Highway by Dan Robinson
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                   Friday, June 24, 2016

Pontiac, Illinois tornado and supercells - June 22

By DAN ROBINSON
Editor/Photographer
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I am back into my post-spring storm season full-on work mode, taking care of essentially 2 full-time jobs. However, I was able to break away and leave at 11AM to make this day's event. I didn't have a specific target set in stone, just northern Illinois wherever the warm front ended up when storms developed. I began my storm intercept mode near the town of Polo, IL as convection began to ramp up in intensity along the Mississippi River. I was on the first storm that emerged from this at Dixon, IL. CG lightning was going nuts, a theme I'd see all afternoon. When I got visual of the base south of Dixon, the storm had dramatic structure, but appeared elevated and at risk of growing upscale rapidly. So, I left this storm and jumped on the second one that developed just to the west, reaching it at Deer Grove. This one had better structure, and more importantly had surface inflow channeling into a persistent wall cloud:

I followed this southeast for a while, but it appeared the storm wasn't really getting its surface inflow established and again, looked as if it might grow upscale. Outflow was really pushing hard south and east of the meso and threatening to blow out the low level circulation. I wanted to be in Chicago for lightning if upscale growth happened, so I headed down to I-80 and moved ahead of the storm to keep that option in play. It was at this time that the storm's inflow started countering the outflow. Structure and radar velocity improved, so I went back north to re-intercept at Troy Grove. The storm was really going nuts at this point on all accounts - screaming inflow, CG barrage. I was in the vicinity of the reported tornadoes here, but did not see them with my eyes as I could only make short stops to stay ahead. I saw a few power flashes in the RFD., and there was a pretty tight anticyclonic circulation here that may have produced a ground circulation near I-39. The storm was heavily HP, but inflow was intense. The inflow tail was pulling scud tags right up off of the ground east of I-39. Eventually, I got a glimpse of a funnel/possible tornado way back in the notch at Waltham:

Darkness fell at this point, and I was beginning to think my day was a bust for for-sure tornadoes. I began heading south for home at Ottawa, hoping to stay ahead of the MCS. This was in question due to a lot of debris in the road and downed power lines. I only felt comfortable going 35mph tops. Finally, I made it out of the wind damage swath and could resume normal speeds. At Pontiac, I noticed the southwest flank of the MCS was beginning to organize, so I headed west a few miles to investigate. The storm cycled a couple times, then really ramped up as it approached me 5 miles northwest of Pontiac. I shot relatively constant handheld still images here at 1600 ISO at the full-wide end of the 10-22mm lens, the frequent lightning providing enough illumination to clearly see what was happening and to capture imagery.

The tornado was close enough to hear, and the noise rapidly increased as a farmstead was impacted about 3/4 mile to my southwest. I drove over to check on the residents as the tornado continued into Pontiac. I was the first one to arrive at two farmsteads that were hit. Thankfully, everyone was OK at both locations. The houses had heavy damage, and some outbuildings, barns and grain bins had been destroyed.

This was the best image I captured of the tornado, the light courtesy of a lightning flash:

The first farmstead was being impacted at the time of this image:

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