Originally I was mad Easter ruined my camping/fishing plans, but now I'm glad because mother nature made up for it.

I finally got a taste of what real storm chasing is like. Until today anything I ever did was in a rush to get to something within 20 miles of my house in hopes of getting pea size hail. No one I knew had any interest in it so i was always going solo.

Today Matt and I were down in central/eastern IL where all the worst action was. I got to experience almost everything from the back-roads, the long hours of driving, filling up my gas tank twice, dodging debris in the roads, calling people on the phones and listening to the NOAA radios for updates [right now we're a fairly low-tech team,] plotting courses on maps. It was great. Although we didn't see an actual tornado, we got some brief hail in the beginning and saw allot of awesome clouds and lightning as well as the darkest afternoon skies Ive ever seen which gave way to the worst white out rains I've ever driven through. We got some cool pics and some decent video footage, neither of which do the experience justice.

The quicksilver cloud

Stupid power pole. It's hard to take pics and drive at the same time.

 

"Low hangy downy thingies" aka scud tags.

What I like to see in-front of me.