I was able to experience these storms in several of their forms.

Friday morning, we left our home (NW of Mpls, MN) to drive to Peoria, IL. There had been severe T-Storm warnings to our NE before we left and we drove behind these two cells through MN. As we were heading S on 52, I thought I'd jog over to the river road (61) in order to give the cells more time to stay ahead of us and we were turned around in a small town due to a gas leak. Whether this was storm damage, I don't know.
We finally caught up (unintentionally) to the western cell as we traveled the river road in NE Iowa. Frequent CG and very high winds with torential rains.
Much fun on the twisty, turning, up and down two-lane amidst the forested river bluffs!
Wild!!
We made our way through with no damage.
The rest of the way south, we observed the cells seeming to merge together and the sky became very dark and there was a pronounced shelf cloud along the leading edge.
We arrived at our motel (in Morton, IL) sometime around 10 PM and as I took the dogs outside, I had a great view of this monster coming on. It didn't look to have lost much of it's punch.
Many intense CG strikes!! A clear shelf cloud visible from the lightning.
The storm arrived in Morton, IL some time around 11 PM and the winds were incredible! Very heavy rain and pea sized hail with the gust front.
On the drive home, there didn't appear to be much damage in IL until we reached NW IL just SE of Galena.
Many limbs and small trees down from there on through NE Iowa.
All in all, since I've been 'storm-starved' here in MN, it was worth the long drive down to go through that storm, even while driving 'blind'. No radio, radar, etc., just eyeballing and making decisions on the fly.
Fun, fun, fun, but I won't be doing any more of this without at least having a scanner/radio in the vehicle!