WEATHER SNAP SHOTS: May 2007 Archives

Southerly winds gusted to gale force under Wednesday's sunny skies, downing these tree limbs west of Chicago in Lee County's Franklin Grove. Anthony Parks took these photographs which clearly show you don't need thunderstorms to produce damaging winds. Wind gusts 40 mph and higher were detected by several of our WeatherBug sensors across the area. My colleague Eric Sorensen, who's Chief Meteorologist at WREX-TV in Rockford, who called Anthony Parks photos to our attention, correctly note these winds were of tropical storm strength! And, the powerful winds are likely to continue Wednesday night through Thursday.

Tom Skilling

PHOTO COURTESY: Anthony Parks

Overnight temps as low as 33-degrees in the Sugar Grove/Aurora area
Our thanks to Brad Clemmons out in Chicago's west suburban Fox Valley
area who photographed Friday morning's frost in his back yard. Frost
was reported in many areas surrounding Chicago and away from Lake
Michigan. This morning's daybreak temperatures were the coldest here in
a month! Thanks again, Brad, for sharing the photos with us!
--By Tom Skilling, WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist

These dramatic shots were taken this afternoon by Chuck Hagen who was driving south of I-80 near Peotone when this gust front hit spinning up a possible gustnado. The strong winds overturned an 18 wheeler just to the south and went on to produce some damage to the east in Lake and Porter counties of northwest Indiana. Our thanks to Chuck for sharing these shots with us.

Photos courtesy of Chuck Hagen of Oak Lawn

Tony Lyza provides us these photographs of damage produced a quarter mile north of Schererville, Indiana and and near Cedar Lake, Indiana and near Route 1 south of Beecher. He shot these during a storm chase and tells us:

"We noticed a concentrated column of dirt, what may have been either a weak landspout or a gustnado (it was difficult to tell given the turbulent cloud bases and copious scud). We left for the tornado-warned cell to the south of us and the damage you will see coming up. On our way back, we searched near where this occurred and found this damage. Note that the view is to the SE, and there are freshly-fallen trees lying both toward the east and, especially noticably, to the west."

Thanks Tony to you are your chase team for the great shots!

Tom Skilling
Chief Meteorologist
WGN-TV

Photo courtesy: Tony Lyza

This fascinating Thursday dust devil 87 miles due west of downtown Chicago near Franklin Grove in Lee County, Illinois, was photographed by Anthony Parks of Franklin Grove, Illinois. Anthony tells me the dust devil, which looks like a mini-tornado and is a region of swirling wind and dust, was about 30 yards across at its base and extended at one point about 100 feet into the air. It formed over plowed ground. Temperatures had soared into the 80s across all but lakeside areas of northern Illinois, and dark-colored plowed soil heats more than the ground around it. This enhanced heating enhances thermals (columns of rising air) which form above it -- which is no doubt what ultimately contributed to the dust devil's formation. Many thanks to Anthony Parks for taking these remarkable photos, and to my colleague Eric Sorensen, Chief Meteorologist at WREX-TV Rockford, for calling Anthony's pictures to my attention.
--By Tom Skilling, WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist

Photos courtesty of Anthony Parks, Franklin Grove, Illinois

Words fail one in describing pictures of the devastation inflicted last Friday evening around 9:30 p.m. Kansas time by the now infamous EF5 twister ("Enhanced Fujita Scale tornado intensity level 5 indicating 200 m.p.h.+ winds) which all but obliterated nearly every structure in Greensburg, Kansas. It was the worst single tornado to touch down in the U.S. in eight years (since the Moore, Oklahoma EF5 twister in May, 1999).

These photos were relayed to me by a colleague of mine here at WGN—Terry Bates of our engineering department—whose brother Perry is a Kansas resident who was forwarded these shots by Larry Holliday, a Morton County deputy.

The mammoth "wedge" tornado responsible for the utter devastation cut a path 1.7 miles wide and 22 miles long across the Kansas landscape. Preliminary reports in to the Storm Prediction Center put the past week's tornado count at over 170—nearly a quarter of all the U.S.tornadoes on the books to date for 2007. Dan McCarthy of the Storm Prediction Center, in a conversation I had with him several days ago, indicates this year's tornado pace is running almost twice normal.

Many thanks to Terry and Perry Bates, and Larry Holliday for these photos. They certainly underscore the scope of the Greensburg, Kansas tragedy.

--Tom Skilling

Photos courtesy: Perry Bates and Larry Holliday

Flooding of an intensity not seen across the U.S. Heartland since the Great Flood of 1993, appears to be unfolding across sections of the Plains—an area hit repetitively last weekend by thundery downpours totaling as much as 10" at some locations. Nicholas Eckstein, a Northern Illinois University alum and now meteorologist at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Aberdeen, South Dakota, has forwarded these remarkable photos of standing water in the wake of last weekend's record breaking cloudbursts. The rainfall was so extreme, 75-90% of Aberdeen area homes were flooding and a number of cars submerged up to their windows. Nicholas, in an e-mail exchange Tuesday evening, tells us:

"Our primary concerns now are the flooding rivers, especially the James River that runs north-south through South Dakota... right along the axis of heaviest rains. The river is very high right now and overflowing in most locations... and beginning to rival record flooding. Aberdeen only averages 20.22 inches/year. We already have recorded 15.55 for this year, which is 10.83 above average and 55% of our record yearly rainfall (normally by this date we've recorded only 23% of the average yearly rainfall)."

Many thanks for sharing these revealing photos with us, Nicholas and please pass along our concern to all in the Aberdeen area. We continue to monitor your situation closely.

Tom Skilling,
Chief Meteorologist
WGN-TV

PHOTO COURTESY: Nicholas Eckstein

I want to share with you these amazing photos forwarded to us by Chad Cowan, who with two chase partners, traveled first to Oklahoma then north to Kansas last week. Chad describes the encounter with the storms you see here:

"With the set up and potential of a classic tornado outbreak, myself and two chase partners left Illinois on Monday night (4/23) with the target area of north-central Oklahoma. After arriving in Enid, OK and waiting for the storms to develop, we realized that current conditions were not conducive for tornadic supercells where we were.

Looking at forecast models and visible satellite imagery, we decided to move north and intercept a line cumulus towers developing along the dry line. 90 minutes later, as we drove north on I-35 through Wichita, the first tornado warning was issued for the line of storms we targeted.

As we moved closer to the line, we chose our target storm nicknamed "tail-end Charlie" because of its relative position on the southern most edge of the line. Although the storm was not warned at the time and did not look very impressive on radar, we chose to target this it because tail-end Charlie's usually have the most tornadic potential due to the southern end being autonomous, not being influenced by other storms and having direct access to the southern flow of moisture.

The supercell was EXTREMELY photogenic. With the sun setting, we could see the updraft tower shooting up to 45,000+ ft and corkscrewing all the way down to the funnel. The entire cloud structure was spinning like a top. The tornado lifted and dropped multiple times for about twenty minutes, and at one point there were multiple vortices. Although the actual funnel never fully condensed to the ground, there was a debris cloud. As the sun set under the base, the storm became outflow dominated and lost strength."

Thanks for these eyecatching views, Chad!!

-Tom Skilling

Photos courtesy: Chad Cowan of Chicago

Stan and Jan Burns of Duluth, Minnesota share these revealing photos taken May 1 of Wisconsin wildfire smoke trapped beneath the shallow temperature inversion above Lake Superior. The Burns tell us we are looking south from Lake Superior's northern shoreline toward Wisconsin. Many thanks, Stan and Jan, for these fascinating shots!

-Tom Skilling

Photos courtesy: Stan and Jan Burns, Duluth, Minnesota

Beautiful shots photographed Sunday in Crown Point, Indiana by Amanda Pickett. Thanks for sharing these with us, Amanda!!

Photos courtesy: Amanda Pickett, Crown Point, Indiana