July 12 Weather

Heading out and S after running errands on Tuesday, a promising cell to develop near Chatham IL and drop SE would be just out of reach before I would abandon an attempted intercept since it was congealing with an ongoing line.



Since I was in the vicinity of the backside of the line seen above, I would hang out in S IL for the hope that when darkness came, it would light up with crawlers. Such did not happen but I still spent time exploring country roads. At a little after 7 PM, new development to my SW exhibited unusual characteristics with what I can only describe as the formation of a non-rotating funnel cloud. With no nearby downdraft or rain cooled air being ingested and just like a landspout to form under a vigorous updraft, the feature below was rapidly rising minus any spin. Small horseshoe funnels can be seen ascending to the right and when rain began falling at left, the whole mass dissipated. I tried to get video but when I hit zoom, the camera locked up and powered down. A few weeks ago it fell on concrete and hasn't been right since. Till I got a backup camera in place the entity was gone. Nevertheless, a still will do and though I have seen this phenomena before, I have never witnessed one this large.



Towards dusk, the clouds took on "that look" suggesting there might be a nice sunset so I tried my luck with it. Not the best compositions as I wasn't in ideal terrain for all the trees but a small pond with nest box was sufficient.







Holding out for lightning which never really manifest, a small cell to the NNE started spitting out sparks so I set up to shoot continuous albeit very distant. The plan was to assemble DSLR time lapse but I was sorely underexposed so I decided to skip it and go with the one image that seemed worthy.





Heading home, short stack near Assumption to catch a roll cloud drifting away. Nearly full moon made for a nice foreground light.