Storm Chaser Jeff Smith

06/19/2026

Yesterday, a damaging tornado passed over I-57 in Illinois, heading thru Charleston and other small communities. Members of our Field Team collected data via upper air sounding and vehicle mounted sensors. Our archive viewer shows some of the close-proximity data from 4 separate locations near the tornado.

The concept of a group of vehicles collecting data in the notch, along with a group going south a few miles, then east, is a great way to have comparison and see a gradient of conditions over an area.

Stationary severe weather data collection probes were planned, but the team was stopped by tornado damage in the community of Loxa. It was a group decision that the proper thing to do was to dump the mission and see what could be done to help.

*You can see the weather balloon path- it's the skinny blue line just south of the storm.

06/18/2026

Going back west! A quick turn around to get moving to this new slight risk for severe weather. I think heading towards Hays, KS or McCook, NE will work. This is for Saturday.

06/18/2026

Here’s the data from yesterday. We launched a weather balloon carrying instruments from Springfield, IL right as storms formed. It’s pretty exceptional.

This is a loaded-gun environment. CAPE (energy) is sufficient CIN (convective inhibition) is only -92. Any surface heating or lifting trigger will equal robust storms.

The kinematic picture is exceptional. That’s the hodograph on the right, it shows wind speed and direction with height. 0-1 km shear is 35kt with 0-1 km SRH of 447m2/s2, equaling extreme low-level rotation. The hodograph shows a looping curve (visible in the image as the purple-to-red-to-orange path through the low levels). 0-3 km SRH of 606 m2/s2 and effective shear of 64 kt both exceed supercell thresholds by a wide margin. Composite indicates like STP = 5.24 and 0-1 km EHI = 4.68 are both in the extreme category (top ~2% of historical tornado days).

Our supporters give us the ability to collect this data- thanks for watching!

06/18/2026

06/17/2026

This storm near Sherman, Illinois is intensifying. Track it in RadarOmega

06/17/2026

Weather balloon launched! See it live on the new WxEye.org

06/17/2026

06/17/2026

Vince Waelti, Aidan O'Brien, Zach TN Storm Hunters, and TwistedWX will be in the field today for this Severe Weather setup. Be sure to Like, Follow, and Subscribe to all their Social Media accounts.

You can find them on WxEye.org and in the Project WeatherEye App!

⚠️ MODERATE RISK of severe storms, once again, for Illinois and Indiana today! This region has seen many of these this year as compared to previous.

While the chances for strong, numerous tornadoes are pretty high, there’s still some failure modes that could cause this event to not happen. Regardless, be prepared for potential tornado, over 2 inch hail and 70+mph wind producing storms after 4pm.

Now is a great time to support our atmospheric research mission by download our app and subscribing to WeatherEye Notify. It’s cheap and the very small margin we make from your subscription helps support our mission. It’s all at the new
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06/17/2026

Get WeatherEye Live in the Google Play Store!

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