November 2024 Storm Chasing Recap

This was a long chase day going back and forth multiple times across the metro area from Dardenne Praire, to Fenton, to Chesterfield and downtown. I was mainly after lightning this night, but was also watching for rogue QLCS circulations that formed intermittently along the squall line. The closest I got to anything tornadic was when the Foristell tornado occurred while I was set up for lightning along 364 in Dardenne Prairie. I ended the night at the Brentwood parking garage shooting upward lightning in the stratiform region of the squall line. I captured four upward flashes, three at 6,002 fPS on the high speed camera. This is a 4-frame stack from the DSLR:

Video from the 4k and high speed cameras:

An on-foot chase across the road to shoot this convection along the cold front arriving at sunset:

I wasn't expecting to even see lightning in the St. Louis metro this night, much less a volley of quality cloud-to-ground bolts. I went outside of town with the 50mm lens to see if I could pick up a few distant bolts from storms down near Perryville, MO. That storm disspated, but a new much closer cell developed about 5 miles to my west over Mascoutah and quickly produced a flurry of nice clear-air bolts:

The first winter weather outing of the season was a 376-mile, 14-hour day for this well-advertised storm in the St. Louis metro on Saturday the 30th. Most of the metro area was at or above 30°F at dawn Saturday, so I expected the worst road impacts to be north of I-70 where temperatures were at or below 29°F. I started out along Highway 61 in Eolia, Missouri and made my way south and east throughout the day. I stopped to attempt video three times, twice for the expected icy roads in the Troy, MO area, then once more at an icy bridge in Hazelwood. After arriving home at 4pm, another heavy band of snow developed and passed over the metro, coating roads once more. I made another run out to Collinsville and back for that. No footage captured (on average, it takes me 5 winter storm events to capture *one* usable winter driving action clip).