Tornadoes

You don't see tornadoes this powerful in January very often, but 55 years ago a killer twister tore through St. Louis County leaving massive damage and loss of life.

After the catastrophic storms that moved through the Midwest Friday, a forecast that calls for high winds and possibly strong storms for Wednesday night gets our attention.

While there were storms that moved through northeast Missouri and western Illinois Friday night and early Saturday morning, our storms were nothing in comparison with the perhaps history-making swath of destruction that made its way through five states.

The official National Weather Service surveys haven't been completed yet, but a violent wedge tornado is expected to be declared one of the longest duration tornadoes in history. Some storm chasers in Missouri had a close call with this twister as their dashcam video shows.

This should be a teachable moment for anyone who chases or wants to chase thunderstorms. New video shows what happened when a guy following one of the twisters in Missouri Sunday accidentally drove right into the path. He fortunately lived to tell about it.

It's no secret that it's been a wild weather day in Missouri and Illinois. New video shows one of the violent tornadoes that caused damage in Missouri today.

August 9, 2021 saw no less than 10 tornadoes touch down in Illinois. One of the storm chasing teams pursuing those storms came from Ohio and their efforts are now in movie form.

Since my wife is a meteorologist, I tend to be interested in weather things. This is the result of that. I wondered out loud what the worst tornado in Illinois history was and almost everywhere I looked agreed that it was a 200-mile-long EF5 that devastated multiple states back in 1925.

How do you know when you've gotten too close to a tornado if you're a chaser? I would argue that's the case if debris is nearly falling on your head like it almost did to storm chasers near Sycamore, Illinois today.

I have a lot of friends that like to chase storms. Some are trained and some are not so much. This video of a chaser who nearly got clobbered by a monster Illinois tornado should serve as a teachable moment.