AFTERMATH, PART 2

A more dramatic example of storm damage found in Forest Park. The tornado went through around 3 PM on Friday and this car had the misfortune of being parked at the wrong place at the wrong time.                   

REMNANTS OF CRISTOBAL

Over the last few days Hurricane Cristobal swept straight north across the Gulf of Mexico and the central U.S. We were brushed by it but no significant effects. It made for nice reflections, though. This downtown office building is maybe 40 years old, all curtain wall, no windows you can open. It may storm outside but the occupants are quite isolated from the elements.   

Midwest Weather

No, we're not in Kansas anymore. That was a couple of weeks ago. We're in Missouri, the next one over.

Taken with my phone going southwest on I 44 driving home from downtown. It kinda looks like a tornado but it's not. Just a strange little shower falling out of a cloud with a bit of, um, image enhancement.

I've seen an actual tornado only once. This photo was taken from our old office that was on a higher floor than our current one and had an unobstructed view to the south. This was a verified touchdown, crossing the Mississippi from about the Anheuser-Busch brewery over to Illinois.                

Thursday Arch Series

.

Another line of severe thunderstorms, this one hundreds of miles long, rolled across the Midwest yesterday. I assume that most of the world heard what happened a few days ago in Joplin, located in the southwest corner of our state. The death count - such a cold term - from their tornado is now 125. Hundreds more are still missing. So when tornado warnings were issued for our area around noon, people got nervous.

I sent my staff home about 3:15 PM. One other lawyer and I decided that, if a twister struck, we would be safer in the stairwell of our steel and concrete office building than our wood frame houses. The warning sirens started going off repeatedly about 4 o'clock. We followed the storms on the web. Reports of funnel clouds came from all around. Several areas had tennis ball sized hail. There were high winds and driving rain but no tornadoes seem to have touched down.

I had a hunch this morning that something dramatic might happen so I brought my good camera. This shot was taken from my office window at 4:40 PM.

There is an even more dramatic picture on Downtown St. Louis 365.