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VIDEO: Storms in St. Louis on Friday night
A "lightningfest" in layman's terms was the result when a stationary boundary lit up with training thunderstorms along the I-70 corridor in southwestern Illinois. The St. Louis area saw at least five rounds of thunderstorms between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, with all of the storms efficient lightning producers. I followed the first round east to Carlyle Lake in the afternoon, encountering a roof blown off of a farm building across the road and having to move some of the pieces to get by (straight line wind damage).
There was also extensive flooding south of Vandalia, mostly fields covered and many areas with water over the roadway. I ended up having to break off of this storm due to the flood hazard. After sunset, new storms repeatedly fired on the boundary with photogenic lightning. These are near Mulberry Grove:
Crop showing ground points:
Taken handheld out of the passenger window on I-70 near Highland:
I headed into St. Louis for new storms moving into the city. For the most part, visible lightning was meager here, but I grabbed a few video clips - one of the most interesting sights was the rain and wind streaming around the Arch ( video clip ).
After midnight, a nice gust front shelf cloud moved over Scott AFB and Mascoutah, IL:
Storms continued through the night and into the morning, when a few close cloud-to-ground strikes woke me up.