Jim and I (Simon) forecasted the possibility of tornadic supercells to form in south central Illinois. I was home in Dayton, OH and Jim was at his home in Nashville, TN. We decided to meet at an exit in southern Indiana across the Ohio river from Louisville, KY. We met at a gas station and left Jim's car in a hotel parking lot nearby. We then began the drive to south central Illinois.

We arrived in Mt. Vernon, IL under a low-level cloud deck, and continued further west on Route 15 hoping to find breaks in the cloud cover. We stopped in a small town (possibly Nashville, IL), after seeing breaks in the cloud cover. But we decided to go further north, so we took 127 north to Carlyle, IL. After hearing
reports of a line of storms to our west we decided to increase our road options by going east to Salem, IL, there we called some people for info.

In Salem the clouds gave way to an approaching line of strong cells. We drove south and encountered a strong cell NW of Mt. Vernon. We punched thru that storm and turned east on 64 where we met up with a supercell, which had just produced a tornado to the SW. The supercell had nice structure, a tilted updraft,
nice flanking line, solid hail core, RFD clear slot and rotating wall cloud. The cell began to weaken and join some other cells to form a squall line. We punched the line and headed back to Louisville to get Jim's car and part ways. The cloud cover had caused the cape to be less than expected, so brief weak supercells formed and eventually made a line.