I decided on a whim to intercept a nearby supercell thunderstorm and it ended up being a crazy experience. 

On September 29, 2019, a frontal boundary was situated just to the south of me and a supercell thunderstorm developed in western IL a little north of the front. The setup was definitely not anything extraordinary and the SPC had only delineated a marginal risk for severe weather. As the storm meandered to the east, I decided to intercept it when it looked like it was going to run into the warm front. 

When I arrived at the storm near Emden, IL, I could clearly see the violently rotating wall cloud, and within minutes it dropped a tornado. I could not see the tornado at first since it was rain wrapped, but I knew where it was supposed to be so I kept moving to the east to avoid being overtaken by it. Right as the tornado became apparent to me, there was a sudden burst of convection and next thing I knew there were GIANT cloud to ground lightning strikes all around me! I was not able to capture the closest strikes unfortunately, but there was one that narrowly missed me that sent a huge fireball up from the ground.

This was a good reminder that tornadoes are rarely the most dangerous part of tornado chasing. I also learned that I need to invest in some dash cams, as this is certainly not the only tornado chase you'll be seeing from me.