6 tornadoes hit St. Louis area Thursday during a ‘busier than usual’ spring storm season (2024)

Nassim BenchaabaneSt. Louis Post-Dispatch

At least six tornadoes hit the St. Louis region Thursday night, the latest weather incident in what meteorologists say has been a stormier season than average.

“It’s been busier than usual,” said Jayson Gosselin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in St. Louis.

The tornadoes that struck Thursday started and ended within a period of about three lightning-filled hours of rain.

The strongest of the tornadoes, with wind gusts up to 110 miles per hour, took the roof off a wedding venue in Eureka and sent a rehearsal party running for cover.

Weaker tornadoes cut across a wide swath of the Metro East. The winds downed powerlines and trees and took shingles off roofs. The World Wide Technology Raceway had to cancel this weekend’s drag races after winds flipped bleachers onto the strip.

No injuries were reported.

While exact numbers comparing this year’s storms to past years were unavailable, 2024 has brought a stormier season than recent years, Gosselin said. The local office of the Weather Service had issued 132 thunderstorm warnings and 43 tornado warnings, mostly since March, across several storms in a wide area that includes mid-Missouri and southern Illinois.

“We haven’t had back-to-back-to-back days of events,” Gosselin said. “But we’ve had some especially busy days with more hail reports, wind reports and tornado reports than usual.”

That includes severe weather earlier this month, on April 1, that brought brought 2 to 4 inches of rain across parts of the metro area, causing water levels to spike in local streams and waterways. A tornado with peak winds of 85 mph struck Chesterfield.

Storms on March 14 spawned multiple tornados and hail the size of golf balls, if not bigger, damaging cars and buildings from St. Charles to Edwardsville. The night before, the St. Louis area saw heavy rain and lightning.

The storms in recent weeks have been part of an “active storm track” in the Midwest, bringing moisture up from the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest U.S., Gosselin said.

The strongest tornado Thursday started near Eureka and cut an eight-mile path to High Ridge, downing power lines and causing damage to buildings near Twin River Road. At peak winds of 110 mph, the tornado registered in the second weakest class of tornadoes, as an “EF-1.”

But it took the roof off a wedding venue in Eureka while the bride and groom and about 20 others were rehearsing.

No one was hurt in the incident about 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Brookdale Farms. The venue was repairing the roof Friday morning hoping to have it in place in time to keep the wedding date on Saturday.

“We’re just feeling very very blessed that no one was hurt,” said Marnie Schneider, office manager. “Everything else can be replaced.”

About 25 people had gathered Thursday night in Brookdale’s main wedding venue, Silo Point, when storms blew off about one-fifth of the roof, Schneider said. Two Brookdale wedding coordinators helped usher everyone into safer areas in bathrooms and back rooms in the venue.

“Everyone walked way without a scratch,” Schneider.

The venue immediately called contractors and Eureka city inspectors that night, so that by Friday morning they could repair the roof and get it reapproved for occupancy, Schneider said.

“Our goal is to be able to give the bride her wedding,” she said.

One of Brookdale’s other buildings, a storage facility, was seriously damaged in the storms, which took off the roof there and caused the building to partially collapse.

Five weak tornadoes also touched down in the Metro East on Thursday, downing power lines and damaging roofs and trees, the National Weather Service said. A tornado with up to 95-mile-per-hour winds in Dorsey caused damage there along a three-mile path. Four weaker tornadoes touched down in Marine, Pontoon Beach and Cahokia.

<&rule>

<&rule>