Three Supercells in Sangamon County IL

When storms began to fire on an occluded frontal boundary located along the Mississippi river Friday afternoon, I headed W towards Springfield IL. Cells developing well to the S of the city despite ongoing severe warnings for storms in Sangamon county are what caught my initial interest. This would be a wise decision for development was rapid and I would find myself already en route to the first tornado warned cell of the day. A second warned cell would develop behind it and though not appear to do much as it passed me, would wreak havoc further N in Menard county. Abandoning this storm for one more lifting from the S, I would find myself watching yet another tornado warned cell.



Doesn't seem like much but below is the first tornado warned storm from W of Roby IL. Unfortunately I didn't quite compensate for direction of movement in my positioning choices. Even though cells were much closer while to my SW, they were lifting to the NNW so by the time they were in front of me, they were actually further away. My train of thought was with the overall line motion that was slowly advancing NE.



Now just W of Berry IL, the second tornado warned cell and one that I thought might produce. Despite the structure, I never saw anything worthy of calling in though I did snap a cell pic and fire it off to the weather service. I shot video of this storm and will assemble a time lapse presentation soon.

Edit 04/17 - Look for video link at the end of this post.

Cell pic


DSLR




My third and final intercept was from SW of Berry near the small town of New City. It was here I realized my flaw in compensating for storm motions and as it would figure, I wouldn't get the chance to correct my error for it merged with the advancing squall line. I did manage a quick intercept and was able to get close to the most significant area of interest for a few shots before succumbing to the whale's mouth. Special thanks goes to Dan Robinson for offering his meteorological insight regarding this event.











TIME LAPSE VIDEO CLIPS FROM THIS EVENT