7/21/06 DISC: MO/IL/KY/IN

I am surprised there is no discussion of today's storms. I probably should have chased, but did not, because as the storm approached, it looked totally like a bow echo, and I did not really want to put an intensifying bow echo moving 45 mph between me and home. However, just before the storm reached Edwardsville, it formed a meso along the leading edge just north of the apex of the bow, and evolved into an HP supercell-type structure. We were not hit too hard in Edwardsville, but the severity of the storm to our south took out the power in all of Edwardsville and many nearby communities - so after keeping power through Wednesday's storms, we are now dark. So, after icing the perishable stuff in the refrig in a cooler, I headed to campus to get power and a wifi connection.

The number of people without power, after falling this morning to 360,000, is now back up to nearly 570,000. Many who had just gotten power back lost it again, with damage reports all over the STL area. Damage is especially severe along a line from the Maryville/Troy area to the ESE, with media reports of a possible tornado. Areal photos on the KMOV web site suggest that possibility. At the least, there is a long, continous path of major damage in Clinton Co. and possibly southeast Madison and NE St. Clair Counties. So maybe if I had chased, I might have seen a tornado, which I did not see as likely until the storm was nearly on top of me. Now I just hope to get power back sometime soon.

I so wanted to chase this storm but I had other places to be.

Friday morning I followed the wife out to work and was in St. Charles County when the initial warnings went out on this. By 10:30 I was back at the house enjoying power for the first time since Wednesday night at 6:45 or so. At the time I had gotten back to the house the Skywarn folks in St. Charles were already mentioning high winds. A few minutes after I arrived home the wind kicked up and the rain started. In no time we had winds in excess of 40MPH whipping through the neighborhood. I heard several loud pops and the power went down again (utility pole snapped in two and crashed into a house about 400ft from me).

The most startling observation was what appeared to be a microburst. It was pretty much textbook from what I remember from Skywarn training. Freaked me out but it was amazing to watch.

Max...

Roll cloud passed through here - Lone Oak, Kentucky around 7:30. This was our second round of severe weather. Extensive damage across portions of the Tri-State area. Southern Illinois hit pretty hard. Lot of power outages, trees down, barn damage, and so on.

Photos here
http://www.usawx.com/july21storms.htm

Example :)

http://www.usawx.com/rollcloudjuly20131.jpg

Lots of big limbs and trees down in Williamson County Illinois from when the storm first came through. The leading edge of the storm held all the high winds.. once the rain started the winds subsided. We had a large (8" diameter) limb come down and took our landline phone down with it.. we don't keep landline service so I'm not concerned so much with that as the fact it ladned on about half my garden.

Little bit of intel I heard on one of our local channels was a mobile home dealer next to I-57 north of Mt. Vernon, IL took a hit and ended up with some of there homes across the interstate.

Limbs down here and there but thankfully avoided the bulk of it. Too busy mowing today to even think about chasing it. :blink:

Also: Aunt just called from up around Highland, IL. She heard the city of Trenton, IL is completly closed off. No one in or out.

Quite a day but gald to be getting rid of this bloody heat!

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7 January 2009 | cameltoepants.com | edit