December 2025 Storm Chasing Recap

I went out expecting this to be a routine snow, again only spending a couple of hours as a "hobbyist" taking a brief look at the conditions, as opposed to the 12-hour day I'd normally have pulled in a commercial cameraman capacity. The lack of road treatment made this a major event, bad enough that I could not even reach the worst areas due to roads - the interstates and highways included - simply being impassable and shut down. I instead made a couple of circuits around the southern end of the metro where conditions were less severe, but found nothing of interest. I didn't go back out for further rounds of snow later in the evening.

These asperatus clouds appeared overhead and with a break in the clouds to the west at just the right time to have vivid sunset illumination.

Despite zero instability, this line of forced convection on the cold front (a "squeegee line" as I like to call them as that's pretty much what the cold front is doing on a huge scale) managed to prompt a tornado warning and several severe thunderstorm warnings as it passed through the St. Louis metro area. I went out to watch it (uneventfully) pass over town.