December 2024 Storm Chasing Recap

Models trended significantly downward on expected snow totals for this event in the 24 hours prior to it. I left at 3AM and immediately observed signs of frost icing on the highways and bridges in the area (unrelated to the snow, which was yet to start, noting a few minor slick spots on bridges near downtown just before sunrise. I then moved up to Alton to await the incoming snow showers, which looked to mainly stay on the north and east sides of the metro area. As these arrived and persisted through noon, some bridges and side roads were briefly covered, but the sunlight filtering through and diligent road treatment was preventing any problem areas from developing. I was done with the event at midday.

I made a trip north to Lincoln along I-55 to monitor a band of snow that was expected to develop at midday. I made a half a dozen passes between Williamsville and Lincoln as the heaviest bands moved through, but the interstate remained mostly clear thanks to diligent road crews. Everything off of the interstate was slick, but I didn't see any issues. No footage captured.

A five-state trip (Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois) to cover the rounds of freezing rain expected across the region. I left home at 4AM Friday with an initial staging target of Topeka, expecting freezing rain to begin north or west of there, Temperatures warmed much faster than expected, so I ended up going all the way north to the Omaha metro to stay in temperatures conducive for road icing. The event turned out to be quite high-impact in the Omaha area, with anything untreated becoming "air hockey table" frictionless. I captured this footage:

I ended the day in Rock Port, Missouri.

Well, this was a first for me: a tornado during a winter storm trip. I originally embarked on this trip to cover the freezing rain from Kansas into Nebraska on Friday, ending up in Omaha for a high-impact event there (that video is linked in the previous log entry). Thanks to the chaos in Omaha, I did not get done shooting there until 10pm, quashing my original plans of heading to eastern Iowa for the ice storm on Saturday. With the late hour, I would not have time to sleep and make it to southeast Iowa at the early morning hour of the storm's peak. So, I turned my attention to a narrow zone of low-level CAPE models were pretty insistent on developing into the core of the main low in central Missouri, thanks to a dry slot wrapping in. The first visible satellite images confirmed this was indeed happening, so I headed south to Kansas City to await this development.

The first blips showed up southwest of Clinton, so I headed in that direction, intercepting the first cell at Deepwater. I was surprised to see very healthy storms with frequent lightning and copious pea-sized hail. Some hints of RFD were already evident in these storms, but I didn't see anything tighten up at that stage. Roads in this area are tricky, so I had to go back to Clinton and the then east to intercept the newest storm. This one began showing a broad low-level circulation on radar, which I intercepted on the east side of the town of Tightwad (yes, that's its real name). Despite the meager couplet on radar, I was surprised to see a tight circulation and intermittent funnel. As soon as I stopped, some brief wisps of condensation reached the ground. I made a close intercept on Highway 7 east of town, zero-metering the south side of the very weak circulation as it audibly roared through the trees north of the road.

I moved east to get back into position, but was slowed significantly from the next storm in the line dropping more than an inch of small hail on the town of Warsaw.

I didn't get back into position until Versailles, where I managed one more pass of an active supercell. This one was much less organized with no low-level meso evident. After this storm weakened, I was out of road options for further intercepts.

Video from the day:

Models showed thunderstorms blooming across southern Illinois after midnight this night, so I headed south looking for lightning+Christmas lights photo compositions. The storms ended up being mostly duds, with only a couple of the cells producing bursts of bolts buried deep within heavy rain. I only stopped to shoot photos once in Nashville, but by then the storms were done producing lightning.

The most interesting part of this chase was the convincing tornado look-alike produced by the Prairie State power plant's cooling system near Marissa. This facility has been known to produce tornado look-alikes in the past, some that have actually been reported as tornadoes.

This is a close-up of the source of the illusion:

Another round of thunderstorms was expected to traverse southern Illinois this evening, but this time they looked to be a little too far away to consider chasing. But at 9pm, I checked radar to see a lightning-active storm defying the models and approaching the metro area from the southwest. I went out west of New Baden to see a high-visibility storm with bolts visible 20 miles away. Rather than just grab another set of generic lightning shots, I decided to revisit the Christmas lights compositions again. But even in the metro area now, I was having trouble finding houses out in the open fields that had any lights up. It took me 45 minutes to find one and get the camera clicking away, but the lightning had stopped by then. It was sad to see so few households are putting up lights, but I'm not one to talk: it's been probably 20 years since I've done it myself.

This was an on-foot photo session for this nice lunar halo over town in the early morning hours:

Leave it to 2024 to give one more supercell chase opportunity - on the last day of the year in West Virginia. This was a surprise event that I didn't catch wind of until the previous night on my way home from my family holiday trip. This setup looked good with a deep-layer and low-level shear configuration rarely seen in the Appalachians, much less during the winter. Skies cleared in the morning behind an early round of precip, allowing for some good heating to take place. The main limiting factor was meager moisture, with dewpoints in the upper 30s to low 40s. Nonetheless, some vigorous convection managed to fire and traverse either side of the Charleston area. I intercepted the first one in Nitro, noting a pronounced RFD clear slot as the storm passed over Poca with frequent lightning.

I moved east to intercept the next supercell in the line heading for Cedar Grove. This underwent rapid intensification right as it approached and passed overhead of me at Chelyan. A barrage of half-inch hail covered the roads between Chelyan and Cedar Grove:

Despite the intensification, the storm lacked a low-level meso and didn't have any discernable structure at all in the updraft region - meaning the tornado threat was non-existent (which was expected given the low dewpoints). I went back into Charleston and parked along Sunset Drive to grab a couple of panoramas of the incoming squall line on the cold front: