Storm Chasing & Photography roundup for January 19-February 8, 2017

Just before leaving work late on this evening, I heard the distinctive roar of heavy rain falling on the roof of the building. A radar check showed a complex of weak thunderstorms arriving outside. I made my way north to the Edwardsville exit on I-55 in an attempt to get ahead of the storms for lightning photography, but I ran into thick fog north of the surface warm front on which the storms were moving over. I stopped briefly to shoot some video from inside of the car, and a bolt or two managed to sneak through the fog as the storms passed overhead:

4K VIDEO: Lightning, thunder & fog during winter thunderstorms in Illinois

Models showed several rounds of thunderstorms moving across southern Illinois during the overnight hours on Tuesday the 7th. A line of cells fired southwest of St. Louis at around 5AM, so I headed into the city to await those downtown. However, just before dawn, a new cluster of storms fired down to the south over Waterloo, IL and raced northeast, while the original storms west of the city began fizzing out. I headed back toward home and caught the storms over my town (New Baden) right as the first light of sunrise began illuminating the landscape:

I took a day off of work to travel up to Bloomington, IL for a band of 2 to 4 inches of snow forecast for the midday period. I ended up shooting mainly along I-55 between Springfield and Lincoln, and managed to capture a small pileup at the Elkhart exit during a brief whiteout. A previous accident north of the exit caused traffic to back up suddenly, and several vehicles had trouble stopping.

4K VIDEO: Snow pileup on I-55 at Elkhart, Illinois