Drivers seek shelter as hail and lightning slam Illinois

We want to take a look at what’s going on on the ground right now as Tony Lawback and Ed Grubb have been on the road there down Interstate 80 moving into the Quad Cities and we want to check in with the latest. Now they are into Illinois near Geneseo and Tony see a lot of lightning out there. Yeah, Jeff, we are actually in the severe thunderstorm here in Geneseo, IL. So we’re just on the other side of the Mississippi River. Want to show you what’s going on here. On the ground behind me, we’re starting to see P to marble sized hail out of this storm. Off in the distance you can see I-80, that’s the overpass right down that way here. But we are starting to get a little bit of hail here, not not big hail at the moment. Most of this, like I said about P to marble size. Let’s show you the radar real quick and we’ll give you an idea what we’re looking at here because this is a hefty line of storms that has had some indications that these cells are trying to break off. Some of these cores are trying to break off the main line here and this is kind of what happened earlier with a significant tornado that we saw down across southeast Iowa. So a little bit of a concern still tornado watches in effect the ones off to the east of here go till about 10:00 tonight. So the tornado risk certainly not done by any stretch, but we are still dealing with that severe weather. We’ll bring you back live here because again we’re going to show you I’m going to kind of do like a an overhead got here just again to show you the hail that’s falling behind me. Again, this is not large hail really it’s the wind that this storm is warned for. But this is quite a core that is coming through. We are seeing a lot of against small hail starting to cover the ground a little bit here trying to see if there’s anything here and we can we can fake it and it’s a little bit here and it’s ice so it’s slippery. I can’t hold it but yeah look at that coming down behind me here Jeff this we’re at a gas station we’ve kind of covered under a gas station and we’ve got cars that are kind of sheltered under it right now including us. So a lot of folks taking shelter here at this gas station in Geneseo, IL right now as we’re seeing about marble sized hail at the biggest maybe dime size as well mixed in there a little bit of wind with this. But again this is going to be a pretty powerful line as it moves across Northern Illinois here over the next few hours. Again tornado threat, not completely done by any stretch. The tornado watch going till 10, Jeff, so could be a busy night now we’re starting to get the bigger hail coming down. Well, Tony, we appreciate that report. They’re pretty active scene there in Geneseo in Interstate 80s, journey there through the western part of Illinois. We’re not that far from the Quad Cities there. So just east of Davenport by a dozen miles, a couple dozen miles out there in fact for your perspective from Davenport to Geneseo about 21 miles. So again, nasty storm in progress and Tony put himself right into the worst of this. You can see the reflectivity, the intensity of the rain and the hail is vivid there. And you can see that suggestion of a little bit of purple here on the map to the South and N they’re very close to Tony’s location, so obviously hail, very heavy rain. And there’s also a similar storm near Prophetstown. This storm has very similar characteristics. It’s going to be very intense, vivid lightning going to turn the lightning on, just going to overwhelm the view there.