April 19, 1996 IL Tornado Outbreak

Two chase cars led by Brian Jewett and Bruce D. Lee departed the University of Illinois at approximately 1 pm. Driving west-southwest, we met up with storms moving out of eastern Missouri and found our first tornadic storm in western IL at approximately 6:00 pm CDT. Participating in the chase were Gwen Pech, Tim Shy, and Tom Grzelak.

Click on any image to see a movie. These images were saved and look best on monitors with at least a 16-bit ("thousands of colors") display.

First tornado (Jacksonville, IL)

First glance - looking west (474K)
Zoom in, out (494K)

Debris near ground (556K)
Tornado still down...(901K)

Rotating base..still down (1 MB)
Last look (374K)

Second tornado (west of Springfield, IL)

First glance - looking east (1 MB)
Rope stage (2.3 MB)

You are encouraged to visit the Atmospheric Sciences department report devoted to this tornado event.

All images/video copyrighted by Brian Jewett | bjewett@ncsa.uiuc.edu | homepage