National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office

Scattered strong to severe thunderstorms impacted parts of central and southeast Illinois on Wednesday, April 7th.  The storms were triggered by a cold front pushing into a warm and moist airmass, characterized by temperatures in the 70s and dewpoints in the lower 60s.  The resulting instability was sufficient enough to sustain thunderstorms ahead of the advancing front.  Despite strong winds a few thousand feet aloft, the storms were never able to tap into this energy and bring gusty winds down to the surface.  Instead the main stormy weather of the day was small hail and locally heavy rainfall.  The strongest storms produced nickle to quarter sized hail across Jasper and Crawford counties between 5 and 6 PM.  In addition, numerous thunderstorm cells training over the same location produced minor flooding south of I-70 from northern Clay County eastward into Jasper County.  Below is a complete listing of the storm reports received during this event.

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT...SUMMARY
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LINCOLN IL
709 PM CDT WED APR 07 2010

..TIME...   ...EVENT...      ...CITY LOCATION...     ...LAT.LON...
..DATE...   ....MAG....      ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
            ..REMARKS..

0229 PM     HAIL             DECATUR                 39.85N 88.93W
04/07/2010  E0.75 INCH       MACON              IL   STORM CHASER

            REPORTED DOWNTOWN DECATUR

0245 PM     HAIL             2 N HOLDER              40.48N 88.80W
04/07/2010  E0.88 INCH       MCLEAN             IL   PUBLIC

            HAIL COVERING THE ROAD

0505 PM     HAIL             NEWTON                  38.99N 88.16W
04/07/2010  M0.88 INCH       JASPER             IL   CO-OP OBSERVER

0533 PM     HAIL             ANNAPOLIS               39.15N 87.82W
04/07/2010  M1.00 INCH       CRAWFORD           IL   TRAINED SPOTTER