Friday evening, April 22, about 9:00 PM Central Time, two severe storm cells passed through the St Louis area. One went along the north edge of the area and another along the south edge. The one on the north obviously had at least one NF-3 or greater tornado that did some horrific damage to several housing areas and Lambert International Airport. The damage was not very widespread, but total devastation where the tornado did touch down. Lambert is completely shut down indefinately. I would guess that will last a few days at least, maybe more. One 757 full of people was just about to depart the loading gate when the storm picked it up and set it back down at the adjoining gate.
I live in a small town in Illinois about 25 miles east of downtown St Louis. We were in the area between the two storms, so all we got out of it was about 4 inches of rain in a little over an hour. No trees or even branches down in my area. We lost electricity for about a minute. My daughter & family live about 25 miles north of us and the storms also missed them.
Darwin, O.F. [aln]
Saw that moving in your area on the radar last night. I’m no meteorologist but the storm displayed that classic bow echo hook that the weather reporters say produces tornadoes. I saw some video this morning. It looks nasty. That cell moved through Indiana late last night and produced some considerable damage, although it seems to have weakened some. Flooding will now be the biggest concern for the southern half of the state. Remarkably the Reds vs Cardinals game was played in its entirety, after a rain delay. The worst of the storm must have missed downtown St. Louis. Rick
Glad it missed your areas and you/your families are safe.
It didn’t miss us or my area. I am in the Maryland Heights area and we got hit pretty good. Amazing that no one was seriously hurt and no fatalities. But quit a few homes are now destroyed. One around the corner from us is condemned due to a huge tree in the front room. Our house did sustain some damage but its repairable. We’ll get all new siding again ( we just replaced the siding in Aug '09), and a completely new roof (was replaced in '08), and all new windows. Got our power back on Tuesday along with cable. Have a small hand size hole in the pop up camper to fix now or let the insurance have it for 1500. There is still 3 or 4 nice size branches in the walnut trees in the yard next to us that are barely attached now.
The Nazarene church is all but destroyed and the Old St Charles road is still closed off due to clean up operations. One subdivision got wiped out totally. Its still a big mess around here with trees down everywhere. The Air Guard facilities got trashed pretty good too. But the F-4 and F-15 statics are still on there mountings. The Harrahs Casino got hit too, it blew cars off the top of the parking garage, and blew cars parked at Lambert across highway 70 onto the highway. Several businesses are destroyed to.
Three looters/thieves were caught steeling 400 new car rims - cops got them at there storage unit.
Hadn’t been able to do much with the models until the last couple of days. Now I can get back to it. We can’t really complain since we didn’t lose anything but groceries and power for a few days. Whats left of our tree in front has to come down now. People kept there sense of humor through out the whole ordeal though. With garage signs in front yards, etc.
We are all lucky compared to Alabama area that just got hit HARD!
Mike