The Setup
The risk for tornadoes today was apparently substantial. The Storm Prediction Center issued a moderate risk for storms including a risk for strong (and maybe even long track) tornadoes. A low pressure was moving from Missouri into Illinois, and strong winds at most levels of the atmosphere accompanied this low. A cold front would follow behind, meaning we would have to begin dropping south through the Mississippi River valley to continue chasing this week.
Today, the risk was in far eastern Missouri and Illinois. Normally, we do not chase this far east, but given the forecast for the rest of the week (relatively quiet), and the magnitude of the event today (strong), we needed to go where the risk was, even if it meant going into regions where we don't normally chase.
The Chase
In order to get to the eastern target on time, we departed Joplin at 8:30 AM without a weather briefing. We crossed the entire state of Missouri as fast as we could. To the north, a line of morning and midday storms was moving across the state. For most of the drive, these storms were far enough away that they did not affect us. We stopped for a fast food lunch in Sullivan, and by that point, the line of storms was getting pretty close. It looked like we would interact with these storms as we drove through the St. Louis area.
We came around St. Louis on the south side, and the shelf cloud and gust front crossed the road, so we kept driving to get back ahead. Some of the line elements were becoming stronger and more supercellular looking, so we wanted to get in front to keep our opportunities open for any QLCS-type tornadoes that might occur.
We crossed the river into Illinois and were able to look back and see the St. Louis Arch as a large shelf cloud overtook the city. Because the storms were moving fast, and I was driving, I wasn't able to get any stills. We never had a good stop where the storm was visible. Only when we were on the freeway could we see it. A tornado warning was issued for the cell just to our north, and we began to follow it, but it was pretty apparent that the storm was outflow-dominant. It was moving fast, and there wasn't much to see, so we turned around.
An hour after we began this initial part of the chase, we were driving back south to look for fresh, afternoon initiation. We drove southeast of St. Louis and found a good area near Chester, Illinois. This area was not affected by the earlier afternoon storms, so the temperature and dewpoint were both higher here than places farther north, and CAPE was much higher as well. We had partly cloudy skies, and it felt quite humid and breezy.
It took quite a while for storms to form over the Ozarks of Missouri and drift east towards our Mississippi River location. The chase terrain was mostly not good, but there were some open farm fields in the river valley, so we drove up and down the valley to find a good spot to view the storms. We settled on an area closer to Waterloo, IL as the storms came close, but by the time they got to the river, they had consolidated and become quite linear. By the time we settled on a viewing location, the line was quite close, and we only got a brief view of the shelf cloud. I snapped one picture with my cell phone, and that was it.
With the storms now past us, we tried for a bit to play catch-up, but it was of no use. We called it a day and began driving back to a hotel in St. Louis. We found a nice lounge/sports bar called the Happy Hour Sports Bar in Waterloo, IL. It was a nice, historic type place in the downtown area, and the most interesting part of the establishment was the sub-basement rooms that were used as distilleries (?) and brewing facilities during Prohibition (if I remember correctly). The rooms are shown in the pictures below. We we didn't really care to see these initially, but some of the other customers there said, "You really should see this." The owner of the bar offered us a personal tour, and we accepted. It was quite interesting!
Wrap-up
As far as tornadoes were concerned, the forecast was a bust. There wasn't really much to see. The predominant storm mode, at least in areas we reached, was linear. The roads in the river valley, where we tried to find a good viewing spot, were not that fast, so it took a while to get into position. Nevertheless, for an early season chase in an eastern area with not-so-great terrain, it went pretty well. We ended up with an interesting experience touring the sub-basement underneath the sports bar.