Severe-Warned Storm, Belleville, IL, June 22, 2009

by John Farley

I noticed a strong storm firing just to my south, near Belleville, IL, so I decided to head out. Sure enough, the storm soon had a severe thunderstorm warning on it for possible winds of 60 mph or more. It did produce a couple of rainfeet, which usually indicate high wind:

Since the appearance of a rainfoot often indicates strong wind, I have no doubt this storm produced some fairly strong wind. However, the only damage report I saw was related to lightning, not wind. The storm did have a great deal of CG lightning, a couple strokes of which hit very close to my car, even though I was ahead of the main area of precipitation at the time. One of the more interesting aspects of this storm was its radar signature, as it was moving south of Belleville and weakening:

Note the nearly round outflow boundary extending south, west, and north from the storm. There were even a couple of new storms that popped up to the northeast of the original one on the tail end of the outflow boundary. I don't think I have ever seen an outflow boundary this round; clearly the storm sent outflow winds in just about all directions.

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