Tornado Moves Right Over St. Louis Airport

While I was sitting here at work Friday night, I was watching some of the live coverage of severe weather going on from our CBS affiliate in St. Louis.  I never anticipated seeing and hearing the kind of damage that occurred.  Not long after 8:00pm, the tower observer at Lambert Airport just outside of St. Louis put a funnel cloud in his observations.  I have only seen a funnel cloud reported in airport obs a couple of times, so this was pretty remarkable.  Here are the obs from 7-10pm - notice the +FC in the middle.  That indicates that the observer is seeing a funnel cloud.

The storm passed, but it wasn't until a few minutes later that the scope of the damage at the airport was realized.  One of the first photos to come out of the airport showed this shuttle van dangling off of the edge of the parking garage:

And then today, we saw surveillance camera images during the storm.  Here is what it looked like when the tornado hit in one part of the airport.  This is from KMOV, the CBS affiliate in St. Louis:


Amazingly, no one died as a result of the tornadoes in Missouri.  That is a tribute to the ample warning time given for the storms and everyone's efforts to get in a safe location as the storm passed.  This is why we always say to get into a basement or interior room away from windows when a tornado warning is issued.  Pennsylvania is not a place that sees a lot of tornadoes, but you always need to take a warning issued for your area seriously.  Just ask the people in Missouri who stayed safe from the tornadoes because they did heed the warnings.

It is worth mentioning that we are heading into peak tornado season in Pennsylvania, which runs from May through July.

--Meteorologist Brian Thompson