Hits and Misses from Our March 10, 2026 Illinois Storm Chase (Part 1)

 

Odds of significant severe weather from southeastern Iowa into western Indiana were in place on Tuesday, March 10, 2026. My son Ryan and I arranged to meet in Peru, Illinois to decide our best location for the chase. En route to my 2 1/2 hour drive to Peru, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) upgraded the previous Enhanced Risk to a Moderate Risk (shown above, posted at 3:00 pm CDT), ramping up the drama. We lunched together at the Peru Culver's, where Ryan determined our best storm initiation waiting location, that being around Galva, Illinois, about 50 miles to the west. We bided our time at Galva Park, then became aware around 2:50 pm of a small storm forming in Bureau County, about 34 miles to our northeast. Believing our current location as prime, we stayed in place. Ryan considered the small but growing radar signature as a "bait storm," not to be acted upon as it was early in the day's process.

3:55 pm. Tornado Watch #32 is issued for a wide area that included southeastern Iowa to western Indiana. Because of this, we still ignored the growing storm cell in Bureau County to our northeast. 

By 4:15 pm with no sign of storm initiation in our area, we were forced to "take the bait" of the eastern storm and scramble in its direction. Very soon the storm went tornado warned. Because of road networks, chaser convergence and the speed of the storm we struggled to keep up. We had hesitated too long! This Radarscope image above from 4:57 pm shows the severe and tornado warned storm near Pontiac, Illinois, and our position (blue target icon) far to the west. 

Though we continued to struggle to gain on the storm, its amazing supercell structure in the distance dominated the horizon, and confirmed its powerful state. The first four images of the collage shown above stretch from 5:23-5:41 pm (eastbound on County Road 14 and State Highway 116 east of Minonk, Illinois). We decided to end our chase at the approach to the town of Pontiac, as we perceived the storm as weakening and we continued to lag behind. Time to turn back west and intercept storms that were now initiating in the area we had been previously. Many seasoned storm chasers did the same. The last two pics in the sequential image above show the storm in the east as seen while northbound on Interstate 39, about a mile northwest of Minonk. And of course at this moment, the storm began to strengthen again and would go on to affect Kankakee, Illinois with a violent tornado. Nikon Z6ii camera.

Continued...