Scanning the Skies For Funnels Over Central Illinois

I've got a fun date with some of my favorite people in storm chasing later today at a little post-season chaser get-together, so I'm not really looking to get into chase mode, but today does present one of my favorite low impact weather setups overhead here in central Illinois.

In generally, I expect today to be a mostly gloomy, at times rainy day across central Illinois. No big severe weather risk, but there's an area of low pressure slowly drifting through the area that has a ton of "spin" associated with it. Harmless little cumulus clouds and developing showers and storms may tap into this "spin" and produce funnel clouds as the ambient spin in the atmosphere is stretched by a small updraft. These can be rather dramatic looking, especially on days with low cloud bases like today, but usually don't touch down and if they do they often pose little risk of significant damage.

At any rate, no severe weather risk today, but don't be surprised if we get some reports of funnel clouds across central Illinois, especially along I-72 and I-74 from Danville to Champaign-Urbana and toward areas like Bloomington-Normal, Decatur, and Springfield late this morning into the afternoon and evening.

Surface vorticity and 0-3 km cape plot at 9 AM... that is a LOT of vorticity.

If we were to see a little more sunshine and instability through mid-day I'd say we had a higher chance of one or two of these touching down as a very weak tornado, but it's pretty socked in and gloomy out there as of 9:30 AM.

Here's a video from a similar day last year:

(Attached graphic from NWS Omaha NE from a previous day, but meteorological explainer and call to action applies directly)