Wild Day in Missouri
A low wall cloud or a lifting funnel cloud. St. Louis, MO. June 28th, 2015.
Today’s storm chase felt like a tale of two stories to me. It started in northeastern Missouri with several discrete thunderstorms firing. For whatever reason, aside from the ongoing joke of “2015ing,” most of the thunderstorms just could not get organized. To make matters worse, the road network was tough and cell coverage kept cutting out. Parts of central to northeastern Missouri are heavily forested, so that is usually not an area you hope to go for quality storm chasing.
After finally getting out of that mess, I dropped south to avoid St. Louis. All of a sudden, a thunderstorm approaching the west side of the city began to rapidly organize. Storm chasing in any big city is nearly impossible. This was a case of an intense storm, but virtually no clear visual on the storm. I did see a very low wall cloud or perhaps a lifting funnel, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. There was a confirmed tornado with this particular storm.
Here’s another inclusive photo from the west side of St. Louis:
The whole situation was a big mess, once in St. Louis. It was hailing and cars were pulled off the roads all over the place. Luckily for the city there wasn’t a strong tornado heading into town. There was also a Major League Baseball game going on, so you can only imagine how bad that could have been.
I did manage to get a neat picture of a double rainbow before all the St. Louis fiasco:
