| Tornado Outbreak - (Missouri and Illinois) - September 22nd, 2006 BY MARTIN KUCERA (c) 2006 - FloridaLightning.com * * * * * * * * (September 23rd - Chicago Trip at the end of the page) |
| It was 2:30 am and I noticed the Storm Prediction Center's next day outlook showed a lot of promise. I needed to get to the Miami International Airport in four hours. Called a great friend of mine and he was willing to take me. Great. Packed all the equipment and we went out the door at 3am. The area of interest was centered just around St. Luis, MO. This fact kept me worried all through the flight, knowing the area is not favorable for tracking and photographing storms at all. Winding roads, plenty of hill with no reasonable view and generally very heavy traffic kept obscuring my mind till I got to the Bloomington-Normal Regional Airport, in central Illinois. This great little quiet airport provided an immediate access to the surrounding countryside. I rented a nice SUV and set off on a journey due south. Storms exploded about two hours into my drive. The sky started to look threatening and the chase was on shortly after. I noticed a nice couple supercells approaching southern parts of St. Luis. It was 5pm on Friday afternoon and I was getting closer to a major city. At first, everything looked great but at the back of my mind I knew things were not meant to go so smooth. Right. Just as the storms started looking great and producing tornadoes - the traffic came to a complete stop. A long while later a tow truck showed up along the shoulder of the interstate. It was time to find an alternate route. I got off the interstate and entered a labyrinth of winding, steep country roads and even with a GPS and the "Neverlost" navigational system I immediately felt lost. The chance to find a nice storm in this mess was minimal. So I just drove around enjoying the countryside, viewing some distant storms. It was almost dark. I quite expected things to pan out this way... this wasn't Kansas, after all. Well, at the end of the frustration I managed to find a great looking supercell. It was on my eastern horizon just before sunset and I enjoyed photographing it very much. Later I drove back to central Illinois for the night, enjoying a nice supercell related lightning show. All in all, this decent day spent storm chasing only reinforced a well known fact that this part of the country can quickly turn out to be a very frustrating mess and often, storm chaser's worst possible nightmare. |
Taken during the take off from the Miami International airport. Only several hours ago I did not even know I was going.
| One of the suburbs surrounding Atlanta International airport. |
| The traffic at the Atlanta airport was quite busy and we had to wait for several planes to clear the runway. I spent the time taking some lame photos of the airplanes. Only a couple hours from the final destination at this point. |
| Rural Illinois - just moments before final landing in Bloomington - Normal, IL. What a great place and a nice little airport to fly to. |
| The town of Bloomington, IL as seen from the airport. You get into your rental car and can track storms right away. Country side everywhere.... |
| First signs of unstable weather - just about an hour south of the airport on my way toward St. Louis and southern Illinois. Looks threatening. |
| Unfortunately this is the part where things get really interesting - for a short while... This is also where I begin to encounter heavy traffic and hills are just everywhere. Finding a hill with a good view becomes nearly impossible with all the businesses and neighborhood littering the place. Never again I would want to go storm chase to a place like this. |
| Beginning of the end. After spending half an hour in this line of traffic I simply turned around to try to avoid major roads but it did not help at all. |
| Notice the white car in the upper left part of the picture. The supercell to my SE is producing confirmed tornadoes at this time. |
| For the next several hours, I simply kept driving, enjoying the countryside, and trying not to thing about the bad traffic. I was not happy about the way things worked out so far. At least, I was hoping for a storm to come to me if I was not able to get to one. I guess my luck finally turned for just before the sun went down, I was treated to one of the most amazing displays of nature - a well developed supercell thunderstorm, back lit from the setting sun. What an opportunity. |
| Also, during this afternoon - the radar imagery showed a band of very strong storms right over downtown Chicago, IL. Later I learned these produced two tornadoes. With the sun setting, I already started thinking about the next day's adventures. Chicago sounded great... |
| Chicago, IL Front and Associated Squall Line Filmed From The Sears Tower - September 23rd, 2006 - |
| OK, once I am out here I might as well do something - still one day left before flying back. I could either go south a very long way - or I could opt for a northern trip and go to Chicago. When I woke up the front was already in full fury and thunderstorms were raging over parts of western Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Louisiana. I would have to drive several hundred miles south to places I did not want to go to. Especially after the previous day. Also, the storms would be very much linear with perhaps a few discrete cells but I was not going to even thing of chasing something like that. So, to Chicago I went. The Sears Tower would probably be the last of the tall buildings on the north American continent that I had never been too. I also wanted to visit the Buckingham Fountain and the Museum of Natural History later that day. |
| The Sears Tower in Chicago, IL became the world's tallest building when it was completed in 1973. It lost the title in 1996. However, the Sears Tower remains the tallest building in North America. It is also the third tallest building in the world, according to most skyscraper statistics. The Sears Tower covers two city blocks and has 101 acres (4.4 million square feet) of office and commercial space. The roof rises a quarter of a mile -- 1, 454 feet (442 meters). Well, before you can get to the top of the building you pretty much have to watch a movie on the history of this skyscraper. As soon as you get to the top you are treated to some incredible views of the city itself and those of the Lake Michigan. Any direction you look - you can bet on spectacular results. The only negative thing I could find about this experience is that you are inside the whole time - no access to the roof or the outside deck - like it was possible on the top of the great World Trade Center in New York City. The open views are also much better if you are serious about the photography part. I guess Chicago weather might have something to do with it. It really is quite windy around here.... I knew there was a front in the area but never imagined it would sweep though downtown Chicago while I was 1,353 feet (412 meters) above the ground. Well, lets just say the front sort of rolled underneath our feet as startled visitors all around were watching in awe - some people simply took off for the elevator, many spoke excitedly to their friends on their cell phones - I even overheard one woman saying that "the clouds are spinning out there and we might see a tornado soon...". It is always amazing to see how fast the front rolls in and this one was no different. When I started shooting some high definition video, the squall line was barely visible on the horizon and the next thing you know it looks like the building is submerged in a bucket of milk. What a spectacular event this turned out to be. It certainly made me forget all about the day before. The views of the approaching front must also have been pretty good from the Lake shore. It makes you thing what it must be like for the people who work up there on top of the Tower year round and see the storms roll in with lightning, thunder and on rare occasions tornadoes (like the previous day....). An hour later I was back down in the street starring at the top of this giant wishing I could have spent a whole day up there with storms in vicinity. Maybe next time. I just would not wanna watch that movie again. I can not imagine people who live nearby and just want to go up and enjoy the view and they make them watch the movie every single time. Oh well. |
| After the squall line engulfed the building it seemed like the clouds were going to linger in the area for a while. Since there was no point of me staying up there looking at the whiteout I decided to go back down and see what the Field Museum of Natural History had to offer. Unfortunately I got there shortly after five pm and they were not admitting any more visitors. Not wanting to leave Chicago so soon and with the weather clearing up fast I decided to go to the suburbs and take some more photos before driving all the way back to the airport in Bloomington. I drove for about ten minutes to the outskirts of Chicago and found an area of an old factory, probably not in use anymore - I thought it be a nice spot to do a shot of Chicago skyline before the sunset. It was not so easy to find a spot with no obstacles blocking the view. |
| A very early morning on a flight back home to Florida. Plenty of new experience and beautiful memories filled my mind during the return journey. The first photo shows a town somewhere in Illinois - people down there are still sleeping - not knowing or caring that we fly right over their place. I always feel so small when flying and looking down upon the world... you see tiny cars going somewhere in many different directions... people going about their own lives, life seems to happen so fast... I guess it is the opposite of us starring up at the airplane from the ground, wishing we were up there, on the airplane, going places... there is really something surreal about flying, it feels to me like traveling in a different dimension, traveling in time.... |
| Flying near the back sheared anvil of a small thunderstorm. The intensity of the sun reflecting off the snow-white cloud at these altitudes is incredible. |
| A mini pileus cloud at the top of a small updraft as seen from the airplane. The pileus layer forms when the cumulus cloud pushes a moist layer of air above it upwards, causing condensation in this layer. Eventually, the cumulus will grow into and penetrate the pileus cloud, after which the pileus may remain as a cloud skirt around the cumulus. |
| The river of grass, The Everglades National Park - one of the places that is closest to my heart. Magic happens down there every day. It is my home. The right photo shows an irrigation channel bringing water from the Lake Okeechobee, down toward the metropolitan areas of southeast Florida. The growing population is just one of the reasons the Everglades N.P. is not doing as well as it used to. |
| All Images and Text (c) 2006 FloridaLightning.com |