May 2025 Storm Chasing Recap

Another nondescript setup produces a lightning barrage of rare intensity near home on Thursday morning. Models had not portrayed this setup favorably for anything worth chasing here, and after a long night at work, I was not planning on staying awake for it. Before going to bed, I checked radar to see echoes right outside much stronger than models had suggested earlier. So, I went out to take a look.

These were initially slow to produce lightning, but after sunrise, the flash rates ramped up rapidly. I moved east to Germantown to find myself in the middle of one of the more intense barrages of cloud-to-ground lightning I've experienced. It was enough that I moved locations to shoot under high-tension power lines to protect my car! It's rare that I feel the risk of a strike is that high to take that action. I captured a few nice 6,002 FPS high speed shots here. The dashcams also captured several close bolts. This Youtube edit has the best captures:

Storms were expected to develop on a "back door" cold front (one coming in from the northeast) this evening. However, the intensity and longevity of the morning rounds of storms (see the previous log entry) left us with very little instability for the evening round. The storms weakened as they arrived in the eastern St. Louis metro area, producing this nice "whale's mouth" formation on the outflow. I saw a couple of flashes of lightning, but not enough to try shooting.

The first in a multi-day Plains/Midwest severe weather sequence was this setup as a split-flow jet ejected across the central USA. The primary risk area for tornadoes was from northern Illinois into Wisconsin, but models portrayed a secondary risk all the way down into southern Illinois and Indiana along a quasi-dryline/cold front. As usual, I favored the home option, which in this case appeared to have similar potential as the primary area thanks to deeper moisture. Dewpoints were significantly "mixing out" in northern Illinois by mid-afternoon, tempering the tornado threat up there and making staying local appear even more reasonable.

As I awiated storm development at home during the afternoon, an outflow was generated from a messy complex of storms and rain way down in northern Arkansas/far southern Missouri. This cooler air surged north rapidly and was nearly at I-64 by 4PM. This would essentially trash our environment for tornadoes and severe storms in the St. Louis metro area and eastward. So, I turned my attention to areas farther north that were out of reach of the outflow and in more sunny skies.

I left home at 4PM with the intention to head to Springfield, then evaluate things from there. After passing Litchfield, convection was visible firing on the front to my west and northwest. By the time I reached Springfield, these were full-fledged thunderstorms. They however were initially struggling to organize into supercells, appearing to have more dominant updrafts on ther north/west sides as if they were "left movers". I stayed just ahead of this activity on I-72 eastbound. I stopped at Mechanicsburg to observe a dominant storm finally establishing an updraft in the right place, with a rear-flank downdraft beginning to surge eastward.

The RFD push became a huge precip-filled slug forming a classic hook. The north side of the surge where a tornado would form was not as organized, with weak surface inflow and a few disorganized wall clouds and lowerings taking shape from time to time. This view was at Illiopolis where a tornado was reported from a small area of dust and dirt getting kicked up on the RFD gust front:

A closer view of the dirt plume:

This was a gustnado at best, and I didn't really notice any rotation with it from my vantage point. I didn't have much time to watch here as the storm was now racing eastward, boosted by the surging RFD. I wasn't gaining much ground on the storm at 65mph, and the warning text indicated a 70mph northeastward motion! It certainly looked like it. I grabbed one more shot of the storm at Niantic before diving south out of its way (as radar showed there could be hail in the RFD winds):

The storm was tornado warned right as I left it, but radar didn't suggest a tornado had occurred during that time. While a broken line of storms with some supercell potential existed all the way down to I-70, none of these were taking off. I stopped to take a look at updraft bases at Oconee and Ramsey, but they were falling apart and no longer producing lightning. I called the chase at Vandalia and arrived home at 10pm.

I didn't bust, but today was possibly the biggest failure of my career thus far. I started at home, awaiting confirmation that St. Louis would indeed be in the clear before heading east/south to the most favored area for tornadoes in southern Illinois. The dewpoint at Lambert Airport was 52°F at 1pm, and although a supercell was organizing and entering the western metro, I thought that there was no way it would be able to do much. Additionally, the storm was initially tracking northeast and it appeared it would miss the city altogether.

When the storm produced a big RFD surge near Chesterfield, I started heading into downtown just in case it had visible structure over the city. I made it to O'Fallon, 15 miles out, when the RFD surge appeared it would be a HP mess. Also about that time, the storm resumed a northeasterly motion on the next couple of radar scans. It appeared to be on course to move harmlessly off to the north (aside from hail). Another rapidly organizing storm was just to my south and heading for an I-64 crossing to my east, so I turned around and began heading that way.

About 10 miles later, I saw the south end of the RFD surge of the STL supercell was relaxing and developing a strong convergence signal - right over I-64, due west of downtown. It was obvious what was about to happen, and I frantically exited at the first opportunity and headed back west. It was too late.

I've posted before about how many tornadoes and great storms I've missed (in both the Plains and the Midwest) due to my home target bias - a bias I practiced with fervor, specifically to prevent me from missing events like today. And I still missed it. Why? Because STL storms often do these fake-outs and last-minute about-faces that seem designed to make a chaser miss them. Or maybe I'm just a horrible forecaster and chaser. It's probably the latter, but it sure does feel like St. Louis storms don't like giving you much of a heads up when they're about to do something noteworthy.

Anyway. I ended up on a storm at Irvington that slowly shriveled as I kept pace with it to Salem. I gave up on it there and dropped back south to Mount Vernon to regroup. There were no good options within 70 miles, and I was ready to just give up and go home. As I pondered the calamity of the day, I realized a new supercell down near Sikeston was within striking distance at Marion, so I thought I'd go keep it honest. I expected it to die right as i arrived on it, as instability was dropping off to its east on mesoanalysis. Plus, a lot of days like this tend to not get better as they go.

I arrived in Marion to see the storm organizing rapidly, with an RFD surge focusing a circulation to the southwest as the entire storm began a hard right turn.

A few larger hailstones began crashing onto Highway 13, and I felt I risked getting cored staying at that latitude. I dropped south on North Refuge Road and managed to get a close-up of the tornado developing and crossing the road:

There was no way to keep up with this, so I headed down to Paducah for the next supercell in the line. The cold front caught up to it and undercut it before it arrived, ending my chase.

To summarize, I saw a tornado and avoided a bust during this historic outbreak. But I also failed in my 14-year quest to not miss a historic/significant tornado in St. Louis visible behind the skyline. Will I keep my home target bias after it's not only cost me so much, but ended up failing anyway? Who knows. I know it will be 60-70 years before something like that happens again, if history is any indication. It's the first time a tornado was visible behind the Arch since it was built 62 years ago. It likely won't happen again in my lifetime. The silver lining is that it wasn't a highly photogenic tornado (like Waverly, Nebraska on April 26, 2024), but a rather poor-contrast view, at least from the typical skyline angles. It was also a killer tornado and quite a destructive one at that, one I would not really celebrate if I had been there.

This log is on the Great Plains chase logs page.

This log has its own page here.

This log is on the Great Plains chase logs page.

This day was a deja-vu closely resembling my May 15 chase. I had decided on targeting this system close to home instead of the more potent environment down south in Kentucky and Tennessee. Vorticity near the surface low and a warm front would be the main players in Illinois. The warm front was slightly more favored for tornadoes, but was another 2 hours away, and I wasn't feeling like it was quite enough to be worth having a 4-5 hour drive home afterward. I instead settled for the much closer cold frontal cells that would be firing along I-55 about 60-90 minutes from home.

I started out watching new convection try to get going near Litchfield. This didn't last, so I headed up to Springfield to intercept a string of three supercells that had been rapidly strengthening. The northernmost two weakened as I approached them on the north side of Springfield. This was the middle cell in the line just west of Sherman as it was becoming outflow dominant:

The southernmost storm was maintaining strength and prompted several tornado warnings. So, mirroring the May 15 chase sequence, I stayed ahead of the storm eastward along I-72. While the RFD surges were strong, inflow at the surface was weak and the storm remained outflow dominant. Despite the constant warnings, I didn't see any signs of it being close to producing a tornado while I was on it. This is looking west in front of the storm at Buffalo:

While storm speeds weren't crazy today, they were fast enough that I couldn't stop for very long. After the storm's character hadn't changed in 40 minutes, I finally decided to let it go south of Latham with this view looking north:

Another supercell was organizing to the southeast over Decatur, and it appeared to be the next in line to become dominant:

This new storm was high-based and didn't have any look of organizing much in the low levels. I expected it to just be a repeat of the last one. Since following it farther would just lengthen my drive home for just more of the same, I decided the continued pursuit would not be worth it. I turned toward home at 3:30pm, bringing an early end to the chase day and this recent string of active severe weather in the Plains and Midwest.