Results of Friday Outbreak, 4 AM Storm Chase

The storm reports from yesterday's outbreak looked like this: A lot of wind reports. A few weak possible tornadoes were spotted, but this is not surprising given that SPC was downplaying the tornado threat. Probably the most impressive report was a train that derailed from its tracks in Illinois (see Raw Video at right).

The severe reports were more scattered in the eastern part of the Moderate Risk, with only one report in western Pennsylvania.

I ended up getting up at 2 AM to chase the storms locally -- I wouldn't normally do this but I figured 1.) It was a Friday night and 2.) This was probably our best shot at seeing storms so far this year (being close to that Moderate Risk).

So I'm standing out in a corn field a few miles from my house from around 2:30 to 5:30, and there were several storms headed towards my location, lighting up the distant sky with lightning, but by the time they got to me they had only flashes in the clouds, with few if any cloud-to-ground strikes; I barely got anything of consequence on video but I'll probably upload something tomorrow where you can hear me talking and at least get a feel for what it's like to get up in the middle of the night to chase storms.