Sunday Supercells in Southern Illinois! | September 20, 2026 Storm Observation
It's always funny to me how the year / storm season progresses and the way that storm chases come and pass evolves from beginning to end, from late-winter/early spring into the late-summer and fall. I think I can explain what I mean by that.
Early in the year the jet stream is cranking, storm systems are bigger and more obvious and every storm chase feels like a national holiday. I'll lose sleep over a big severe weather day early in the year for 3 or 4 days as we lead up to it, it dominates the entire 24 hour period while I deal with the extra forecasting load and make logistical decisions to setup the storm chasing side, and there's so much pressure to see something cool because it's been, theoretically, such a long, dark winter since last storm season.
By this time of year everything is stale, lawns and gardens look tired and exhausted from the growing season, and so do I. The jet stream is weak, and air masses are stagnant. There will be storms to observe, but the conditions that lead to them won't be obvious days-out, there's often high uncertainty around if/where/when it'll storm even the day-of, and I'm already full & satisfied from a long-storm season and have let other areas of my life start to take priority again.
That brings us to Sunday. Well, let's rewind to Saturday. I actually thought Saturday would be the big stormy day of the weekend, and it mostly was. It was kind of funny, I woke up and was sipping my coffee in bed with my wife and I had this jolt where I was like "wait, wasn't there a chance of storms this morning?" remembering some of the models the night before brought a cluster of storms through the area in the early morning hours. To my delight there was a cluster of storms in its infancy erupting a county to my west. It was a long, thundery morning at home in Urbana. Those morning storms left a ton of subsidence in their wake which kept a lid on any further storm development locally.
Tons of storms and a corridor of flash flooding erupted across portions of Iowa and northern Illinois on Saturday night. Those storms sent an outflow boundary surging south across central Illinois on Sunday morning, which settled in south-central Illinois and probably mostly washed out. When I woke up and took a glance at things in the morning there was an MCV spinning over northern Illinois, a remnant area of low pressure effectively generated by the overnight convection in that area, and some clearing across central Illinois.
Beyond that, there wasn't a lot to get excited about. A couple of storms would probably erupt along the broader frontal zone across Illinois and Indiana, and a couple might have a reason to spin a little if there's any remnant vorticity associated with the MCV to the north or the outflow boundary to the south. Along with a subtle little 30-35 knot wave in the mid-levels, I thought maybe a supercell could sustain itself for a couple hours somewhere within a couple hour radius of me. That was about it. Not much to get excited about, because there's no target, no plan, nothing really. Just, "yeah I guess I'll stare at the radar and visible satellite and see if anything gets interesting".
That's not my favorite way to spend a Sunday in mid-September, so, I ran some errands, cleaned out the car, put the Bears game on, got my feelings hurt by the Bears game, took a little Sunday afternoon nap, all while peeking at the weather and how these subtle little features were evolving and whether they may create a not so subtle storm in the near future. Through 4 PM or so, that answer was mostly "no".
A storm erupting by Taylorville, IL got my attention though, right as I kind of ran out of things to do at the house. A storm near Taylorville moving east-southeast is kind of awkward to get to leaving from Champaign-Urbana though, and I wasn't really sure the storm would hold out for the entire 1-1.5 hours time I would need to get from my house to it.
That's when you do a quick reality check best case/worst case - if I throw my cameras in the car and start driving what's the worst that happens (excluding external, horrific variables like, I get in a car accident) - worst case, the storm dies out and I go for a no-reason Sunday drive and clear my head before the week ahead. Best case? The storm survives as a supercell and I get a sunset show, and heck, the way 2026 is going around these parts, maybe even a tornado! Or more likely, something in between.
Extrapolating the storm's current track out another 1.5 hours or so would actually have it crossing the Interstate 57 corridor right around Neoga, IL or just north of Effingham which is almost dead even at one hour away. It felt simple after a minute or two of using my imagination... drive south an hour and intercept a supercell.
30-40 minutes down I-57 I was sure glad I left. The storm had developed into a supercell and was definitely sustaining itself as it chugged east-southeast toward the Effingham vicinity.
The storm was surprisingly high based when I got my first view, but then I remembered I shouldn't actually be that surprised because in casually watching the day evolve I did note that things had mixed out a bit more down there by Interstate 70 with dew points in the 60s and temperatures near 90. That made for 20-25 degree temp/dew point spreads and yeah, some high bases.
Farmers are beginning to harvest corn and soybeans across the area and were kicking up some pretty big clouds of dust. While flow around this supercell in itself wasn't enough to kick up big clouds of dust, the winds did pick up the already lofted dust and blew it around easily making for some scenes that felt out of the High Plains. A striated, flying-saucer looking supercell, sculpted in the sunset, with clouds of brown dust blowing around beneath it. Yeah, I'm glad I went for a drive.
Full circle, that's what's so funny about it. By the end of the day it's like any chase day I ever hope for, staring at a beautiful supercell in the sunset with a non-zero chance of a tornado, but with a much different journey than some of the early peak season/hyped up days. I didn't lose sleep over this storm for 4 nights leading up to this it, but there it was any way.
I always say, there's no such thing as a low-end chase day. If you think you've got a chance of observing a supercell or tornado... that's a high-end chase day!
I let the storm run me over east of Newtown, near Willow Hill. The sun was going down and I didn't have any interest in battling the increasingly worse terrain into the darkness with what was purely a structure-show to be enjoyed in the evening light. The storm was a downburst machine as I watched it over the last hour or so, and for some reason I was surprised when I was whacked by a downburst of my own, taking casual 30-40 mph winds and quickly ramping them up to 60-65 mph winds in a matter of seconds, flattening some corn in the adjacent fields.
After flying the drone around for a moment and getting some shots of the flattened corn I realized a storm over my back shoulder to the west had gone tornado warned! The velocity scan wasn't all that impressive, but it was another supercell, and it was headed my way. I figured I could drop an easy 10-15 miles west and south and get into a spot out ahead of the storm to the east where I could watch the lightning illuminated updraft approach. I could see that visibility was good ahead of the storm, and could see the rain-free base in the remaining dusk light even from 10+ miles away.
I found a spot just off Highway 130 up a hill on a gravel road and set my cameras on tripods and just enjoyed the show. From my view, the storm had an impressive "stacked plates" updraft base and maintained a wall cloud for a while, but I'm not sure it was ever that close to actually producing a tornado. What a way to end the chase though. A big updraft flickering with lightning, clear skies and stars behind it, moon glowing to the east lightning up the updraft. I just sat there, cameras clicking away until the storm passed to my south and the overspreading precip from the anvil began to rain on me.
I was a little further away from home than I figured I'd end up today, about 2 hours away with a 10 PM ETA back in Champaign-Urbana, entirely worth it for an evening spent with two of the prettier supercells I've seen even in what's been my best year ever out of 20+ years storm chasing.
If you've read this far, you deserve the video version of my day. Here's my Storm Observation Vlog (#86!) from September 20th, 2026:
