Yesterday was an incredible day for tornadoes in the midwest and great lakes region! 5 were left dead including 3 in a tornado near Toledo. Major damage was reported in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan.

The town of Dundee, MI was hit by a Tornado which has been rated an EF-2.

A NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE STORM SURVEY TEAM HAS CONFIRMED THAT A
TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN AT 211 AM AT COUNTY LINE ROAD AND RANKIN ROAD
IN MONROE COUNTY. THIS TORNADO THEN TRACKED EAST SOUTHEAST...MOVING
THROUGH DUNDEE AT 217 AM. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS OF 130 TO 135 MPH
WHERE ESTIMATED JUST WEST OF DUNDEE...WHICH IS CLASSIFIED AT A HIGH
END EF2. THE WIDTH OF THE TORNADO AT THAT TIME WAS 800 YARDS. AS IT
PASSED THROUGH DUNDEE...THE TORNADO WAS STILL CLASSIFIED A LOW END
EF2 WITH MAXIMUM WINDS OF 115 MPH. THE TORNADO THEN TRACKED ANOTHER
7 MILES ALONG HIGHWAY 50 BEFORE LIFTING AT 227 AM AT THE DIXON ROAD
INTERSECTION...CAUSING GENERALLY EF0 DAMAGE TO THE EAST OF DUNDEE.
THE TOTAL PATH OF THIS TORNADO REACHED 13.5 MILES.

It also appears tornadoes went across Cass County Indiana and near Three Rivers, MI.

I was out chasing, with an initial target of Monmouth, IL. I wish I had stuck to the target, but I got suckered west to Iowa by the Mesoscale Discussion and the Tornado Watch from the SPC. I ended up too far west to make it back to the beast of a tornado which was dropped west of Peoria. It's possible that tornado was on the ground for almost 80 miles. It appears the towns of Dwight, Streator and Elmwood sustained direct hits by these tornadoes.

The Storm Prediction Center has placed much of Western Illinois, Eastern Missouri and parts of Southeast Iowa under a Moderate Risk for Severe Thunderstorms. While the Moderate Risk was issued based upon wind potential, Tornadoes are also possible! I will be streaming live here shortly on the Live ChaseCam Page from Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois.

We are currently eastbound on Interstate 80 through Iowa, surging east to get into position for later today. The sun is shining in Western IL which will raise CAPE values higher, along with deep moisture surging northward. We shouldn't run into meager moisture problems we ran into yesterday.

So I haven't really done a personal update blog in awhile. This is more me neglecting this then lack of things to talk about. Since my last 'personal' blog update in July, I have gone on a couple fun trips and have some pictures.

I'll start off with my trip to Oklahoma in the middle of August. It's month and a half old news now, but I spent the weekend of August 15th in Oklahoma. I flew in Thursday afternoon, the 13th. I had a direct flight from Detroit Metro to Oklahoma City, which went otherwise uneventful.

My friend Steve Miller (OK) picked me up at the airport, and we got lunch then went out riding in his Jeep around Norman and then offroading around Lake Stanley Draper. The weather was hot and sunny - Just the way I like it. We ended up back in Steve's garage where we sat around for awhile talking. Scott Bennett and Bob Hall both showed up in the evening.

We have arrived in Normal, IL at our hotel room, and are setting up for a semi-big day tomorrow. The SPC has maintained it's moderate risk of severe weather, with a 10% threat of Tornadoes.

I will definitely be out chasing tomorrow, and will be streaming live video to TornadoVideos.net. You can view the live video player on my Live Chase Cam Page

I have been watching Wednesday's setup in Central Illinois since about Friday in Oklahoma, and haven't been super impressed until I did some further digging last night. I know it's possible to over-analyze setups, and maybe I have done that for this one, but I am really liking what I see now.

First of all, the setup appears to be a significant severe weather episode, regardless of mode. Plenty of shear, CAPE and moisture to work with. While it looks mostly linear, there is still some decent (in terms of Illinois/Indiana) turning to the winds. This got me to start looking back at some of the significant tornado episodes in the Midwest in recent years, so I went to the Sounding Archives Page and started looking at some older soundings from the 'big' days.

The first one I looked at was October 18, 2007. This is the DTX sounding from that evening:

I'm going to break this trip report blog down into 3 parts. The trip, the weather and the coasters. So first off, the trip.

The Trip
I put almost 3100 miles on my truck over the course of Tuesday Night - Sunday afternoon. My truck ran great, and I put about $325 worth of gas into the truck. I left work on Tuesday and drove almost 600 miles to Rolla, MO before crashing out at my friend Dylan's place. On Wednesday I made it to Oklahoma City area (Moore, OK) to hang out with Steve Miller (OK) and Shane and Bridget. Scott Bennett eventually showed up from Omaha, but he was a bit later. Steve treated us to some extremely tasty filet mignion, sweet potatoes and asparagus dinner. That was the tastiest dinner I had all weekend. It was also really good to meet Shane. He is as ranty and funny in person as he is on his show.

The drive down was mostly uneventful. It was the first time I had been west of Rolla, MO in 7 years on I-44 and the first time I had been in Oklahoma since 2002 as well.