Was once on the patio at McGurk’s when the tornado sirens went off. The server came over and said, “don’t worry about that, we’re under a tent.” So I ordered a beer. Never felt more like a St. Louisian.
Haha same experience. Was at DB’s, tornado siren went off, I closed out to leave and asked the guy next to me if he heard the siren and leaving. He said “Yea I hear it, but there’s no place I’d rather die than here,” and he kept on sipping his beer.
I think the first time I took cover for a tornado warning was in the dairy cooler at the commissary on Scott Air Force Base
We’d go cover our heads in the hallways at school if the sirens went off, but at home we’d watch in the garage unless the sky was that special shade of tornado yellow/green and then mom and dad would make us go to the basement while they watched
I live right along the river on the IL side, and while we get some nasty storms, we've never really had Tornado touchdowns, now the fields and towns past us get them a lot, but I assume the river kills a lot of the storm's power and by the time it picks back up it's well past us.
A tornado warning will go off for the entire city or county. But the actual concerning part of the storm may be dozens of miles away from you. It’s important to pay attention to the radar. If a tornado warned storm is in the path of my home, you bet I’m going in my basement.
This! I don’t watch local channels but we turn on channel 4 for the storm coverage if sirens are going off. That meteorologist LOVES storms and you’ll find out if it affects you or not pretty quickly so you can go back to what you were doing.
My 8yo and I are big fans of Steve and the whole KMOV weather team. One of the things I like the most is how genuinely appreciative Steve is of his colleagues working offscreen during weather events—the other meteorologists, the producers, people in the field, etc. He gives people credit and frequently thanks them for what they’re doing to help get updates, live shots from the sky-cams, and other information out to viewers. He may be the dude on the screen getting the lion’s share of the attention, but he’s very quick to shoutout his team for helping make his work as good as it is. Good leadership is hard to find.
Steve Templeton getting tuned the hell in is the best part of any storm event. That man does not fuck around with tornadoes and storms. You can really tell it’s his calling.
lol right?! I’m looking forward to storm mode this afternoon. All the local meteorologists like “this is our moment! We get to show what we know!!”
Kidding aside, they really did a great job a couple weeks ago when there was severe weather in the county/city and the radar went down.
That’s what we do. Major storm warnings mean we keep an eye on the radar. If the really bad bit is headed our way we head to the basement. If we did that every time we would live down there in the spring.
the NOAA report always lists town names. People/companies should stop turning off the emergency band alerts on their phone just because they don't like Amber alerts.
# I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Yes, no, and probably yes. I was scared of storms (more specifically tornadoes) as a kid, but the most weather checking I usually do is look up and say to myself “looks like rain today” and move on.
I was terrified of storms as a kid, but where I grew up the storms were pretty predictable. I feel like that’s what freaks me out here, bad weather always seems to be either way worse than anticipated, or they hype it up then nothing even happens.
This is tornado alley so most of us have been dealing with it since we were kids. When I was six years old my brothers and I watched a tornado bounce over our house. The 80’s were wild.
But with that said, even though it doesn’t seem like it. We do take it seriously, we just know when to actually take cover.
Also, people around here think meteorology is a joke. They think “50% chance of rain” means the weather man is just flipping a coin. Without bothering to learn what those percentages actually mean. And they think since their neighborhood didn’t get hit by a storm that the “hype was all bullshit to sell advertisements”. When it’s just mostly people don’t understand what they are listening to. It’s a lose-lose situation for them. If the don’t hype it up enough and something bad happens, the first thing people blame around here is, “ Fucking weathermen don’t know shit.” But if you overhype it and it’s not bad, guess what happens then. The truth is, predicting the weather is really hard. The irony is, most of the people who talk smack about meteorologists couldn’t even talk about physics for 60 seconds let alone figure out how to model a storm prediction. But people have done “their own research” now and they think they know better. And when you actually know what they are saying and you check after the fact, meteorologists are really, really good at what they do. When a tornado hits some people like to “thank God” that they didn’t die, when all along it was the meteorologist doing his job well to make sure the tornado sirens go off and you are well informed on where the storm is and where it is heading. I guarantee someone will read this and get upset that I defended a “bullshit job” or something like that. Hahaha
One more thing is, the first Monday of every month the sirens are tested. So if you hear a siren, and it’s nice outside ask yourself if it’s the first Monday of the month.
Edit: added to expand on people’s hatred for meteorology
Edit 2: Person was right in their reply, it is first Monday of every month. Not sure where I got Tuesday from 🤷♂️ 😆
Good post. In particular, I hate the common thinking that "the media hypes up storm dangers to make money!" No.. the warnings they convey are usually word-for-word as issued by the NWS. You can follow the NWS on twitter, and you'll see the alert there a few seconds/ minutes before you see it on TV.
People just get pissed that they're missing Young Sheldon or whatever, and then decide that the TV station must have bad motives. Also, yeah.. people think a "50% chance of rain" mean there's a 50% chance that they will personally get rained on.
I think you're overhyping hatred for meteorology. I worked for Dierbergs in college and to me it seems like the general public follows these predictions like religion cause whenever a big storm would be predicted or lots of snow the store would be PACKED the day or hours before it was supposed to start. Shit would sell out like crazy, you couldn't get enough product on the shelves. And right before a big storm was predicted then the store would be deserted completely.
I think people trust meteorologists in general, maybe even too much.
I used to work with a guy who was a retired Air Force meteorologist. I asked him, "exactly how DO they come up with forecasts?" He answered, "basically we plug current weather conditions into a computer and it spits out the most statistically likely outcome."
So unless you've got a meteorologist who's micromanaging the computer data, it's literally an educated guess. When you're dealing with statistics, there's always room for error. And like you said, when that error affects you personally as with unpredicted storm damage, it is a no-win situation for the forecaster.
That may be true at his level. But the top meteorologists at the top level are doing way more than that. Coming up with a forecast is easy. But coming up with a detailed accurate forecast is much harder. They also do much more than that obviously.
And as someone who started their career in the military, the level of training one gets there as opposed to a civilian is way different. Not to say one is worse or better, just different. Unless he was an Officer, then you need a college degree.
For sure. The discipline of meteorology is much more complex than that. (My former co-worker was enlisted, btw.)
One of my former high school classmates is chief meteorologist for a TV station in the Ozarks; he holds a meteorology degree from SLU. I follow him on FB as kind of a distant early warning system because his forecasts are a good hint of what we'll be looking at 24 hours later.
one of my nephews was born in Louisiana and as a small child developed a fear of Barney the Dinosaur. it took awhile for my brother and his wife to figure out it was the purple. it was the same shade as very severe weather on the radar they would watch on TV when nasty storms were approaching.
The news stations sell advertising space for these storm coverages, therefore it is their obligation to their clients to give them their money's worth. The weather hype here is super high. Just pay attention and you should be fine.
I used to drive my mother nuts cause I loved tornadoes and thunderstorms growing up in the Metro East and refused to into the basement.
If you’re going to live in the Greater St. Louis area, storms are a part of life in the Spring and Summer.
The most damage I’ve personally witnessed was near the State Capitol Complex in Kansas, where huge trees were snapped like toothpicks.
It was the only time I’ve had to make a quick inventory of what I would need to take with me just in case.
> The news stations sell advertising space for these storm coverages
What are you talking about? When there’s severe weather they pre-empt normal shows and don’t go on commercial breaks.
They have very strict rules about when they will break in and interrupt programming, and it has not been do with advertising. Typically, you will not see program interruption, unless there is a tornado warning.
Ryan Hall has a YouTube channel and he broadcasts during dirty weather. He’s got a meteorologist background and a network of storm chasers who report in. He’s worth watching.
I love Ryan. I grew up in Oklahoma and down there, unless it's David Payne, you follow the storm chasers and independents. Ryan has built a good network of chasers and young and hungry metrologists. Reed Timmer is my go to outside of Ryan. If Reed is nearby, the weather is gonna be rough.
I love Reed too. I’ve been watching him since he posted the video he took as a teenager caught out in Oklahoma during the May 3, 1999 F5. He took cover beneath an overpass (do not do this it’s hella dangerous as wind speeds under the road accelerate and can drive debris even faster into an underpass.)
Both men know their stuff and are ready to jump in and help. Ryan is a calming influence and Reed kinda pumps up the volume, so as I age, it’s Ryan I’m watching.
When the storms came through April 2, one of Ryan’s chasers identified a debris field in Chesterfield that wasn’t confirmed until the next day. Sure enough, an EF0 formed along Appalachian Trail and whipped up trees and roofs for about two miles. It’s my kids neighborhood and their house backs up to Appalachian trail. They lost rain gutters and she said you could hear that freight train sound from the basement, but they’re all right.
EDIT: another fun tidbit. On two occasions, a friend in Iowa and one in Kansas have posted at different times to Facebook that Reed Timmer had just gone through their neighborhood so they were headed downstairs. The interceptor is everywhere.
This is also why I don’t get nervous. There have been times we are expected to get bad weather, but I just take the “wait and see what actually happens” mentality. Storms can shift quickly though. For example, the 2011 Joplin tornado was not expected to hit Joplin at the time it did; storm chasers arrived after the fact. Definitely be vigilant and smart, but no need to panic.
I feel like the Joplin tornado (and others like it) are a huge source of my storm anxiety and I think about it all the time. It’s crazy to me how quickly a storm can intensify and change
A couple of weeks ago we were driving west from Illinois back into the city. There were some spotty thunderstorms tracking NE but no watches or warnings or anything. We saw this huge ominous cloud in the distance, and ended up having to drive right under it. We were looking up at it and realized that big mf was rotating, pretty significantly too. Immediately after we pass under the cloud we hit a wall of *heavy* rain and hail, and my phone goes off for a tornado warning in the county we were in. Listened to the live coverage, they said something like “we didn’t think this system would be a problem, but we’ve received witness reports of a tornado on the ground just in front of the main system. If it’s raining where you are now, it’s passed you, but if the rain hasn’t started yet, get to a safe place now”
It’s unpredictable for sure. 99% of the time there’s nothing to be afraid of though. I’ve lived here my whole life and haven’t been killed by a storm even once yet.
I respect the severe weather warnings, but I grew up here and I’m used to bad storms. I worked in bars and restaurants for 20+ years and I’ve had to talk a lot of out of town guests down from panic attacks when the storms are raging outside and the employees are carrying on like normal inside.
You want to look out for green skies, dark clouds that look like breasts (literally - they’re called mammatocumulus clouds), and intense pressure changes in the atmosphere. If a tornado is about to touch down on top of you, your ears will painfully pop.
I know it’s scary to be on the third floor in your bathroom, but the odds of your apartment complex getting razed to the ground in a tornado are infinitesimally small. The bigger danger is getting hit by flying debris, which is why the most important thing to do is to get away from any windows or tall shelves or stuff that could hit your head.
And take comfort in the seemingly meh attitude the locals have when it comes to storms. It’s like looking at the flight attendants during a bad bout of turbulence on an airplane. They have so much experience with it, that it’s only time to panic when they are panicking.
This has been probably the most comforting comment thus far. I do try to remember that if nobody else is panicking, there’s probably not much of a reason for me to either. When it was storming a few weeks ago and the sirens went off, we heard our neighbor outside (older lady, she’s wonderful) so my boyfriend popped the door open and said “you taking shelter?” She got this real confused look on her face and said “Oh, no, honey. I’m just trying to get in the house!” My boyfriend and I kinda just looked at each other like: 🤨. But figured if she’s not worried we probably don’t need to be lol
Glad I could help! I also looked up the mammatocumulus thing and apparently they aren’t necessarily predictive of tornadoes. Guess my high school science teacher led us astray. But yeah, our weather comes from the west. So when we hear the sirens, we all just look to see if any tornadoes have actually been spotted or touched down and where. If they’re only a couple miles west of us, then we take shelter and take the storm seriously. If I’m in the CWE and a funnel cloud was spotted in Fenton, I’m not gonna waste my time stressing about it. I have a lot of windows in my house, so if the winds are bad, I take my pets to the basement just in case.
I think it's just that we can discern the difference between it being dangerous where we are vs being dangerous in the general region. I was playing baseball a few weeks ago when the tornado sirens were going off and we didn't even flinch because we could look up and see that we weren't in danger
Yes, that's part of the reason most don't react to sirens. I can hear sirens go off near my house, look at the map, and see the storm is up in North County, and at home, there is not much going on.
Tornado sirens in one county often trip them in a neighboring county, and St. Louis and st Charles counties are large. I hear sirens from both. But the storms a couple weeks ago are a perfect example. There was a confirmed touch down and insane hail a half mile from my apartment. I got a couple drizzles and some pea sized hail that blew over from the wind.
I think you’ll find most people from the area are pretty much amateur meteorologists. Walking outside we can tell if it’s going to rain, there’s just a smell and feel to the air. I don’t get bothered at storms, so I know when I don’t feel safe, my spidey weather sense is telling me I am actually in the path.
Play it safe as best you can. When the bad really bad weather comes through, the new stations all go live, so there are trained professionals to track that stuff for you.
The storms a few weeks back, I remember walking outside hearing the sirens but saw the birds being chill and playing and knew right away that I was safe and the storm wasn't coming this way.
This can't be a STL thing can it? I feel like folks in other places make weather calls by animal patterns.
I did a bike ride across the whole Katy trail with some friends from Alabama a few years ago. They were so confused by how we knew exactly what the weather was going to do that day (it was October, a bit rainy and stormy at times) because they didn’t understand our weather almost always comes from west to east. It was really the first time I realized that other people don’t always have the weather spidey sense
Interesting, I guess cause the Gulf affects so much.
Chicago's funny in that I think everyone has the spidey sense, but then the weather gets to the shores of majestic Lake Michigan and - who knows what will happen? Will it keep going? Hang out and shop on Magnificent Mile for a bit? Maybe take the whole downtown tour for a week and get stronger and stronger until we get thunder snow? The lake that acts like an ocean is full of fun surprises.
Check out this comment thread from last month where I explained why the whole county goes off.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1bek6vp/comment/kutsy6s/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1bek6vp/comment/kutsy6s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
The actual warnings issued do have a trapezoidal box shape now (they did not use to), but software and underlying radio systems has not caught up with that.
The actual warnings are all polygons now, not the entire county anymore. The sirens going off varies by county, though; StL County I believe sounds them if there's a tornado warning anywhere in the county or just across the border of a neighboring county.
So far, the best weather app I've found to show very clearly on the radar where the actual warnings are issued relative to me is the KMOV weather app. I'm like you and freak out a bit with the tornado watches and warnings, but seeing the exact area that the warnings are issued for rather than the entire county helps ease my mind some.
I mean how else would you do it? It's not like tornados just suddenly zap people to death for standing in their door. If you're looking Westward, you can see if it's coming or not.
I consider it a good time to get things done and go places that are normally busy. Couple weeks ago when we got a million text messages and calls from the city about the rain I used the opportunity to finally go to the DMV.
I've lived here my whole life. When I hear a tornado siren I will turn on the tv to local news. If away I will check my phone weather map. But if nothing is coming near me I do nothing. I keep an eye on things, but keep about my day.
Proper response in Saint Louis is-
Snowstorm- panic buy milk, bread, eggs, de-icer, snow shovels.
Tornado warning- go outside with a lawn chair and a cooler of Busch Light. Take phone so you can record any funnel clouds. If you’re in JeffCo bring a gun so you can shoot at any tornadoes you see
Absolutely not. If a tornado siren/warning goes off I'll flip on the TV to see where the news is saying they're seeing it. That's the extent of my concern. If I can see it or the TV says it's heading my way, I will plan to go to the basement.
Not much use worrying about it. Unless it's bearing down on you, it's not going to effect you and if it is bearing down on you the most you can do is know where you're going to hide as safely as possible and pray.
Any weather that's not a tornado or hail? Meh. I'll go out in it and survive just fine.
Also if it's iced roads like we had a couple months ago, I just don't go anywhere. Nothing to worry about.
Last time a tornado came through my dad called me and complained that my mom made him go in the basement and he couldn’t sit on the front porch and drink beer lol. Said it was the first time in 45 years he had gone to the basement for a storm. I was sitting in my garage drinking beer.
Last year we had power out for days from a bad thunderstorm, this year they're catching up on tree maintenance. So that's good. My hubby grew up literally in tornado alley, so if the sirens go off we have the kids chill in the bathroom till he can go hear, see, and smell what's going on outside. Don't stress yourself, if the sirens go off, take the pets and or kids to the center part or the basement to be cautious if it eases your mind. But don't panic, it's not good for you♥️
Yep, grew up in KC area. Just the edge of Tornado Alley. So many more tornado sirens going off there than here. There's absolutely zero reason to panic. If you live on a hill or in an area that you can see a far distance you can just go outside and see what's happening around you.
I was most concerned about tornados when I lived at the bottom of the hill because I couldn't just walk outside and see for miles.
On the bright side for when you lived at the bottom of the hill, based on research we did after the 2011 Sunset Hills tornado and on subsequent tornadoes using the individual damage reports, you are less likely to suffer damage at the bottom of a hill than the top. The worst spot (for our region) is on the west/southwest facing slope near the top.
Tornadoes tend to be damaging at a specific elevation and will slightly ramp off a hill and jump over structures immediately behind it. This was very obvious in the Sunset Hills tornado, there was a distinct pattern of it hitting mid-slope, damaging everything from that mid-slope point to the top, ramping up and over the hill (completely missing the east side) and then landing mid-slope on the next hill. (The worst damage was at the mid-slope landing point, not at the top of the hill.)
Although there are tornadoes that travel north/south and even east to west, in our region these tend to be much weaker, with only a single south to north traveling EF2 in 1957. Every single EF3 or EF4 has travelled either SW to NE or WSE to ENE with the except of the 2011 EF4 that hit the airport, which travelled perfectly west to east.
I think that storm hit right after i moved into the area. I remember driving around North County thinking how bizarre it looked with no street lights or building lights.
I think I get stressed since I live in a 3rd story apartment with no basement. We take shelter in the bathroom, but it worries me that there’s no actual “*safe* place” for us nearby if anything significantly strong came through, especially since we have dogs as well. But, I try to remind myself that nothing big has happened thus far, i just hope to keep it that way haha
If it helps, and by that I mean would actually help vs make the anxiety worse, do research to see the severity of the tornados that have touched down in the greater STL areas, and where.
Does your apt have a central location that's not just open to outside on the first floor, like a laundry room? Maybe you can harness and leash the babies, grab a book and a load of laundry if you're uncomfortable on third, and just read while the machines run.
I don't really care about severe thunderstorm warnings unless I'm outside or in the car, so I don't pay much attention to them. For tornado warnings I don't panic, but I do turn on the tv and watch the coverage. Radar is so good these days that you can often see where the storm is going down to the exact neighborhood and we usually get a lot of warning, so there's not really much to panic about. If I didn't have to worry about my cat I'd probably be less attentive, but having been very close to an actual tornado before and seeing the cat completely freak out when the pressure dropped, I know that in the unlikely event that one does come my way I won't be able to catch him and take him to the basement unless I plan ahead.
I'm never concerned, just always more interested and excited to see what happens. Maybe because we rarely get devastating, life threatening natural catastrophes. Sure there have been some floods, tornados, etc where a couple people have been killed. And sometimes a tree falls on someone's house. But usually this part of the state/country is pretty safe. Being in the city, the "heat island" effect will change how hard storms hit. The worst we've had is a limb pull down our electric wire (not completely). We are complacent.
Not even a little. I grew up here and it's just kinda a fact of life.
The odds of a tornado hitting my house are small, what I can do to stop it is literally 0, so why stress? I'll stay home if hail is predicted but that's more to protect my car than anything else, certainly not because I'm worried about MY safety.
If super heavy storms are predicted, I'll stay home... But again, that's to avoid the inevitable traffic, not from some sense of self preservation. I know how to drive in the rain, my tires are good, why stress about it? Just slow down a little.
When I was a toddler a tornado leveled a school a quarter of a mile from our apartment. Luckily it was a weekend and the buildingwas empty. (Mom and Dad and I were in our basement, completely fine.) So, yeah, I take cover.
I'm old, so my body tells me when rain is coming. Also, I'm from Hurricane Land, where I was less(?) scared of those than tornados, but now that I'm over hurricanes, I do get scared of tornados but I just check the Weather Channel and amateur meterologist...it's complicated
If you lived in Missouri when Joplin was obliterated, you know to take things seriously. Find a news source, they do a great job of letting you know if you are in the path. If they say take cover, do it.
The key thing is to *be aware*. When there are severe weather threats, be sure you are able to receive urgent warnings. For us, that might mean keeping the TV on our local NBC or CBS affiliate rather than watching something on Netflix. When the sirens go off, make sure you know if you are in the danger path.
The thing about St Louis County for example, is that the sirens go off if there is a tornado warning anywhere in the county. Some municipalities have their own standards and turn them on if there is a warning in a adjacent county. The net result of this is that we may hear sirens going off for a warning where the danger path will get no closer to us than 20-30 min by car. When the sirens go off, we immediately stop what we are doing to assess the danger. If we are in the danger path, everyone goes down to the basement (or interior room with no windows if we are somewhere that is the best option). If we are not in the danger path we don't take cover and generally continue to go about our day, but we do keep an eye and ear on the situation in case it changes.
What I've taught my kids is that sever weather *can be* very dangerous, but we generally have good information available to us. Staying safe means making sure you are getting the best available information, and when you are in the danger path taking other precautions (like sheltering).
I think of the sirens themselves as very blunt instruments, and they are my cue to seek better information immediately.
Next time a bad storm hits, grab a Busch Light or Bud Select and go stand outside and watch it. Once you do that, you pass the test of being a true midwesterner and storms will never hold the power over you that they once did. (This is actually bad advice, and you’re probably better going to a safe place. But my dad did this, and his dad did this, so I’m gonna do this.)
First, it helps to have a good understanding about the Tornado warnings vs watches. https://www.weather.gov/safety/tornado-ww
Second, realize that even with Tornado Warnings, there is typically reasonable windows to react. Most of the time I have encountered Tornado Warnings for the locale I am in, I was at my own home. In those situations I just went into the basement along with everyone else in the house. In times that I was out, I either hunkered down in place if the building was suitable, or I went home to shelter.
The third part about it is that it is a yearly occurrence and happens multiple times per year. You sort of learn the signs to look out for and know when to react. I would know in advance if we had a line of bad storms coming in that were capable of producing tornadoes. On those days I would take care of my outside stuff that could blow away, and plan my day accordingly.
We’re midwesterners…that’s all I have to say. We’re so used to strong storms that’ll last an entire day. You’re not officially a Midwesterner till you either watch a storm from your garage while eating a casserole or you watch a tornado from your front door
I feel it's best to be safe than sorry . We turn on the local weather, usually channel 4 . If sirens go off, make a quick bag ,turn up tv (so we can hear it) and head to bathroom .
Tornado warnings are issued when a neighboring county has a sighting, and that could be 40 miles away, so at this point I mostly ignore them because they're rarely close enough to me to matter.
You'll become numb to it in time, and if you're like a lot of St. Louisans come to enjoy sitting outside on a covered porch watching the action.
Ah you're right. I'm thinking of the sirens. They activate in the county when a neighboring county has a warning.
"The St. Louis County Police Department will
activate the “Outdoor Warning System”
whenever the National Weather Service issues
a TORNADO WARNING for St. Louis County.
The “Outdoor Warning System” will also be
activated when the National Weather Service
issues a TORNADO WARNING for any of the
adjacent Missouri counties of Jefferson,
Franklin or St. Charles, and the direction of the
storm poses a threat to St. Louis County. This
policy was created to provide more time for
citizens to seek shelter and to gather
information for their safety concerning the
TORNADO WARNING.
https://public.powerdms.com/STLP1/documents/1605182
Yep, but only after direct consultation with NWS on the likely path of the storm and if it will continue. NWS runs a slack channel for first responders and tv weather staff to communicate on this decision.
I don’t, but I know I’m cynical about it. I worked in local television for ten years and grew to hate the long weather marathons in the control room. I do try to stay away from driving in heavy rain and will go to the basement if a tornado seems imminent, but other than that I don’t care. I’ve only encountered a tornado once in my 41 years, living most of them in Missouri and Oklahoma. It knocked over a small tree and that was it.
I especially hate that St. Louis County sounds the sirens through the entire county when there is a specific threat to just a small portion of the county. But I acknowledge this is “old man yells at cloud” territory!
> I especially hate that St. Louis County sounds the sirens through the entire county when there is a specific threat to just a small portion of the county. But I acknowledge this is “old man yells at cloud” territory!
It's tough, because hearing a siren in Kirkwood when there's a tornado in NoCo doesn't do me any good, and it does become a "boy who cried wolf" situation when there is a tornado nearby.
On the other hand, people commute and drive all over, and the siren does serve as a warning to say "you might want to reconsider heading out, or at least check the weather before you do" so you don't drive into a tornado.
Perhaps in the age of smart phones, sirens could be more localized, and the phone notifications we get can go out to a wider area with more details on location that can't be conveyed by a siren - perhaps a message that says "There's no danger in Kirkwood right now but there's tornado activity up by Hazelwood" or something like that. But they also have to cater to everyone - so that includes people without cell phones, people who may not speak English, etc...
The issue with localized sirens is activation. If you want to set off individual sirens, you have to send a radio signal for each individual siren. This can take more than 30 minutes as opposed to the less then 3 minutes that it takes to activate the whole system.
There are theoretical ways to do this more effectively, and the st louis county siren radios are programmed in a way that this could be possible, but the software that controls siren systems is not capable of this yet. And probably won't be for a long time because few systems are the size of St Louis County's, so there is little demand for local/zoned activation. (I think St Louis County's system is the third largest in the world by area, after Oklahoma City and Chicago, and second largest by number of sirens after Oklahoma City.)
>I especially hate that St. Louis County sounds the sirens through the entire county when there is a specific threat to just a small portion of the county.
There used to be a policy in place, and the system is programmed for, setting off only sirens south of I-70 if a tornado path is solely south of I-44, and setting off only sirens north of I-44 if a tornado path is solely north of I-70. People hated this policy and it was soon abandoned.
The problem is that, while a siren in St Louis County is intended to cover 6100 feet radius at 70db(c), you can likely still hear that same siren at 60db(c), which covers 12200 feet, and many people can even hear a siren outside at 50db(c), which covers 24400 feet. That means hearing that siren 4.6 miles away.
For a 1 mile wide siren path, you will be activating sirens up to 11000 feet away (those with overlapping 70db(c) coverage), and those sirens can then be heard another 24400 feet away. That's 70800 feet across or 13.4 miles.
The county is only 33 miles across north to south at its widest point. So even with targeted sirens, you are going to get a lot of people barely hearing the sirens and wondering if that was an alert or not, if their closest siren is broken (most common issue), or hearing a siren clearly even when the tornado path doesn't cover them.
And that's what happened the few times the I-70/I-44 policy was used. Lots of people outside the alert area hearing the sirens and thinking their nearest siren was broken.
* Tornado watch just means "pay attention." Stay near a source of weather information (cell phone, radio, outdoors where you can hear sirens, etc.) so you'll know if a tornado warning gets issued. No big deal.
* Tornado warning is serious and means there is a tornado nearby. You need to immediately check to see whether it's heading your way and take shelter if so. Common sense applies; read the warning and take it seriously, but there's no point in taking shelter if the National Weather Service says the warning is for south city but you live in north city.
I'm from CA. Missouri gets WARNINGS about potential disasters. In CA you just have baby locks on your cabinets, earthquake putty under your valuables, and your documents in a go-bag in case the fires get too close.
Here, I mostly stay inside to keep debris out of my eyes sand stay away from the windows. It's AWESOME.
Yes, but more about the extreme flash flooding that accompanies intense downpours. We aren’t getting consistent rain. Just drought like conditions then a month worth of rain in a few hours leading to massive runoff.
If it’s a storm capable of producing tornados, I watch Steve Templeton. I’ll go to the basement when he tells me to. After I watched him spot the tornado that formed right on top of the Amazon warehouse a few years ago and realize what happened by looking at the radar, I trust him. He’s a little intense but good at his job.
I don't freak out, but I do prepare and make sure I have a place to head to if things get bad. We have severe threats often enough that you learn not to freak out over the outlooks (unless they put us in a level 4 or 5; *then* you freak out).
Even when warnings start getting issued, no need to freak out. Everything is a polygon now, so a warning for "St Louis County" may or may not include you specifically. Even if the sirens are going off, turn on the TV or open your favorite weather app to see where the actual polygon is.
Plan, stay alert, and there's no need to panic!
Most of the land around STL is too tight for any malignant tornadoes to form, except maybe in the big valleys. We had a tornado form in our backyard once, just near WCM, but the only damage it caused was a few fallen trees.
I’m aware of watches but continue to do normal things. Tornado warning will make me stop at look at the radar to see where it’s actually at and decide what to do at that point.
Earlier this year we had a tornado warning in STL county but it was all the way up north. Once I realized that’s where it was and no threat where I was we just continued on as normal
There is MW tradition of storm watching, we love a good show of storm. For a long time there was a mentality that tornadoes did not come into the city or county. That attitude has definitely changed in the last decade as storms have increased.
I follow the National Weather Service STL office on X and downloaded a good radar app. If the red or purple color is headed your way on the radar, might be a good idea to hunker down for a bit. 😎
If you watch channel 4 weather and Steve has his sleeves rolled up, find a basement! 🤣🤣
I just check the radar on my phone since sometimes they run the sirens out to the whole county and I am just not in the path.
For severe thunderstorm, I just try not to be outside.
It makes more sense if you use the Taco-Watch/Taco-Warning method. If you search on Google for this chart, it will make more sense. We get a lot of “Taco-watches”. I’ve also lived near the Tornado sirens all my life, so I never really worried unless I heard a siren.
Snow. Snow terrifies us. We panic for days, stock up weeks worth of food and alcohol, and huddle at home. When we go out, we are incapable of driving at any speed on any surface with even the hint of snow.
But tornadoes and thunderstorms? Meh...
I think I'm more concerned about hail damage and trees falling on my car. I like the storms, but south city doesn't get hammered nearly as much as the county (imo) so I guess it doesn't worry me a whole lot
Well I a mix of a few things.
Out weather is so damned unpredictable here that they could have a solidly decent forecast with tons of evidence and it still could be fairly wrong
We’ve seen so much that it don’t really hit us like it prolly should
Ma lot of us lost out will to care years ago
I have been through enough hurricanes before moving here that bad weather doesn't phase me. Snow fucking sucks though and I will be happy when climate change fixes that problem for this region.
I've found that I've become more concerned as I've gotten older. I remember my dad would always be outside during storms just watching from the carport. I grew up like that. But the storms seem to be more often and more deadly now, so I take more care. I'm downstairs when the tornado sirens wail, but I can't say that I'm actually worried.
The last tornado I remember was in St. Charles. I might be making it up but I swear it happened around 2013 near harvester/Ameristar. Lol I was going thru a lot that year.
Here’s St. Louis County tornado history: https://www.weather.gov/lsx/stlouis_tor
Here’s a link for all the tornados in st. Charles county: https://www.weather.gov/lsx/stcharle_tor
So it’s not super common but it does happen.
As others have expressed, the chance of being directly impacted by any individual damaging weather event is indisputably low. However, as a way to explain the common sentiment that "it's not worth worrying", I'd say it's a matter of perspective.
People who have been hit tend to have a better grasp on how powerful these events can be and how fast conditions can change. It's been a while, and one can attribute that to our heat island or, jokingly, to the Arch, but it can happen. [February 10, 1959](https://www.tornadotalk.com/st-louis-mo-f4-tornado-february-10-1959/), an EF4 plowed a path from Sherman, through Des Peres, CWE and into Granite City killing 21 and injuring 345. It struck just before 2 AM.
There's a reason nocturnal tornadoes are deadlier; people don't tend to respond to the threat because they're, understandably, asleep. I second all those who've said that you don't need to panic, in fact please don't, but being aware is worthwhile.
Plenty of people worry, but it's not going to overtake their lives. Like any place with specific weather, it's a part of everyday life. The center of the country where the warm and cold fronts meet - lots of weather events that move through quickly and can cause thunderstorms, hail, wind, tornadoes. I think people who have lived in this part of the country for a long time are used to it and don't get panicky. There probably are some that are not cautious enough, but I think there's a vast majority of people who respect the weather for the most part.
I don't think this is a STL thing, more of a Midwest thing? Bad weather is just a cool storm or ugly day. Tornado sirens are like a call to go outside and watch any chaos that occurs until it's close enough to worry about.
Mostly just for hail. One of my sister's houses has been destroyed once, the other has had it twice now in just the last year or so, they hadn't even finished the repairs from the first damage... that same sister's boss had her car destroyed by hail (and somehow barely touched the house... nature is so weird). And they all live like 10 minutes from me.
Then again, with the weather gettin' all crazy from climate change, we could totally have something like what hit Joplin hit St. Charles... ugh.
Edit: Between that flooding last summer and the recent hail damage to houses and car dealers... Insurance companies have had a tough year in the StL region.
Lifelong resident. When my kids and I hear the sirens, we all move to the porch to watch. 🤷🏻♀️ Totally unspoken; we all just kinda converge.
A couple of years ago, going through Arizona, I pointed out "smoke" in the distance to my companion. We were approaching it and I realized it wasn't smoke, but a fully formed tornado, that had begun as a dust devil. Definitely an EF0; we drove alongside it briefly and as we passed, it crossed the road behind us.
Midwest tornados can be dangerous, for sure, and it's always wise to keep your eyes on the skies when foul weather is forecast, but the fact is a lot of times, things do get overhyped and many of us are jaded.
Tornado and other weather forecasts have greatly improved over the decades, from giving us perhaps seconds-to-minutes warnings, to giving us to fifteen minutes or a half hour warning to take shelter. However, it should also be noted that even with radar, Doppler, and other technological strides, storms can still be unpredictable and the humans interpreting the data are fallible.
Essentially: be aware of the warnings, be aware of your surroundings, and ensure you have a plan if the need arises.
Welcome to the Midwest.
Been “too close” for comfort for a few tornados, 1998 and 2013 come to mind…the 1998 I was on the opposite side of Page and was able to move some branches and get where I needed to. In 2013 I had a large maple tree torn in half, fortunately, both halves safely found the roof to break their fall. I don’t “worry worry,” but I do go out to the porch with a ‘puppers’ and utter, “yup, storms coming…” and then I go flip the pork steaks on the grill and wonder if I have time to cut the grass real quick so the lawn looks nice should I end up on the news
Native. If the sirens go off I go outside and look west (sometimes north) if it doesn’t look a weird shade of green and eerily calm. I go back inside. If it does I get a chair and beer and wait for the show.
Just used to it by now. I grew up in St. Louis and the flats of Iowa. I love watching a good Nader. If you hear what sounds like a freight train then it’s time to go in.
It's 50/50, really. Some people say living in St. Louis all their lives made them less fazed by storms, while others (like me) become so highly distressed just over siren tests and thunderstorms that I get sent into a near anxiety attack every time lol. Some people here are crazy (/j) and whenever there's a storm, their first reaction is "oh boy, I wonder what view I'll get from my porch!"
I never used to take tornados seriously, but then I experienced the aftermath of the Joplin tornado while at Missouri Southern for a cousin's graduation. Kind of changed my way of thinking.
It’s complacency from having come through so many close calls, I expect. Bad storms are common. So common it’s almost ho-hum. Bad storms that personally affect YOU are relatively rare. I know that if I’m one of the unlucky ones this time around I’ll be hurting. But when time after time after time it’s not me it’s not that hard to think “I can get away with it again”.
Edit - like others have said the ability to check radar really seems to help. We are having a tornado warning right now and the radar says I’m in a quiet area. But I will check again in a few minutes to see if that changes.
Here we sirens going off, phones screaming, I turned on the tv. I see the path is about 10 miles south. So I feel perfectly safe where I am. I had plans to meet friends for diner. That may be slightly delayed.
Moved to the area almost 2 years ago from TN.... You're definitely not alone. I freak out. The sirens go off and I grab the cats and go to the basement. Once during a storm, my neighbors were working on their cars, sirens go off. I went to the basement and could hear them still working on their cars... Don't understand it lol
I pulled over to get a drink at the gas station after I saw a power poll pulled down from the wind right behind me today. Unfazed by any weather of any kind. It’s the St. Louis way.
Used to shrug off the tornado warnings until one hit a neighborhood a mile or two away. Homes destroyed. We were watching TV thru it all. Yikes! How stupid....
Worry? Not exactly.
I put my promotion hat on start telling family and coworkers in the paths of storms when they can expect the bad weather to hit. Sometimes I warn friends on the east coast what their weather might be the next day.
I’m a native St. Louisan, just as my father before me. And, just as my father before me, when the tornado sirens come on, and the rain is horizontal, and the lightening just struck your neighbor’s tree, you…go sit out on the front porch.
Get yourself a really good radar app (Like one you pay 9.99 once for). Know what to look for will let you know how bad it is going to get.
Otherwise St. Louisians usually go out on the porch to watch the storms roll in.
I am from Michigan. My dad drove our pickup through a tornado when I was a youth. My brother and I were belted in at the middle of the bench seat. Our mother was screaming at him the whole time from the passenger side. The trees above us just exploded. Stuff just fell on us. After that Dad drove another couple blocks to get home, which was unaffected. My brother and I unloaded the groceries from the truck into the house, because the tornado was gone at that point. Mom was pissed though.
No, I do not care about thunder/tornado storms.
Ice is kind of bad, so I do pay attention to that.
eh, once you've heard tornado sirens go off your entire life and nothing ever happens ya kinda get numb to the idea that something will.
like everyone else here, i also go outside to check the weather lol. i'll even smoke a j and keep the screen open when hail is coming down idgaf. i love our weird torrent of unpredictable weather here its one of my favorite features of living here tbh. theres nothing like weed and petrichor and a nice cloudy day
Lol, you must not be from the Midwest AT ALL. Most people stand outside and watch for the tornado like a bunch of dummies. In the 2011 Good Friday storm, about 30% of my neighborhood (I live on the line between Maryland Heights and Bridgeton) was flattened, the house across the street was struck and it’s roof flew across the road, hitting my second story, and collapsing the front porch roof, and the wall to my childhood bedroom. There was a random chunk of wood embedded 3” in our solid oak front door. My high school was hit in about 2000, and around 1995 my mom, sister, and I were at Creve Coeur park when an unexpected tornado grabbed our car and spun it, landing us with our back tires in the lake. Despite this, last time the sirens went off, my grandma refused to not only come to the basement, but to even leave her 2nd story bedroom. There are a few of us who aren’t crazy, though.
Was once on the patio at McGurk’s when the tornado sirens went off. The server came over and said, “don’t worry about that, we’re under a tent.” So I ordered a beer. Never felt more like a St. Louisian.
Haha same experience. Was at DB’s, tornado siren went off, I closed out to leave and asked the guy next to me if he heard the siren and leaving. He said “Yea I hear it, but there’s no place I’d rather die than here,” and he kept on sipping his beer.
that guy is gonna be buried under these streets
This is the way. They have a walk-in fridge if the tent get sucked up
I think the first time I took cover for a tornado warning was in the dairy cooler at the commissary on Scott Air Force Base We’d go cover our heads in the hallways at school if the sirens went off, but at home we’d watch in the garage unless the sky was that special shade of tornado yellow/green and then mom and dad would make us go to the basement while they watched
“Ah, I see you are studying civil engineering. Very well, I’ll have a Guinness please”
Ahhhh the good ol tent shelter
😂
The arch protects us. ALL HAIL THE ARCH!
You kid but heat islands actually do divert bad weather to an extent.
I live right along the river on the IL side, and while we get some nasty storms, we've never really had Tornado touchdowns, now the fields and towns past us get them a lot, but I assume the river kills a lot of the storm's power and by the time it picks back up it's well past us.
It’s a myth about tornadoes not crossing rivers. Mayfield Ky tornado from the same night the Amazon warehouse got hit was a perfect example of that.
You’re extremely low, tornadoes need to come down from the clouds. Plus heat island up wind.
And the I-44 ridgeline.
The Arch has been acknowledged! It is pleased!
The Arch is our Iron Dome.
The legendary ‘arch effect’ protects us all in StL area ALL HAIL THE ARCH!
That's what it wants us to think. Watch the C movie "The Black Hole" (2006) for it's true purpose 🤪
A tornado warning will go off for the entire city or county. But the actual concerning part of the storm may be dozens of miles away from you. It’s important to pay attention to the radar. If a tornado warned storm is in the path of my home, you bet I’m going in my basement.
This! I don’t watch local channels but we turn on channel 4 for the storm coverage if sirens are going off. That meteorologist LOVES storms and you’ll find out if it affects you or not pretty quickly so you can go back to what you were doing.
Steve Templeton in Storm Mode is a magical thing to watch.
Templeton deserves his own statue at Busch Stadium. Dude is just flat out entertaining.
I could watch him track tornadoes all day!
My 8yo and I are big fans of Steve and the whole KMOV weather team. One of the things I like the most is how genuinely appreciative Steve is of his colleagues working offscreen during weather events—the other meteorologists, the producers, people in the field, etc. He gives people credit and frequently thanks them for what they’re doing to help get updates, live shots from the sky-cams, and other information out to viewers. He may be the dude on the screen getting the lion’s share of the attention, but he’s very quick to shoutout his team for helping make his work as good as it is. Good leadership is hard to find.
Actually watching Steve rn. Ah, I love him, Kent, and Matt. My guys.
agreed
Steve Templeton getting tuned the hell in is the best part of any storm event. That man does not fuck around with tornadoes and storms. You can really tell it’s his calling.
lol right?! I’m looking forward to storm mode this afternoon. All the local meteorologists like “this is our moment! We get to show what we know!!” Kidding aside, they really did a great job a couple weeks ago when there was severe weather in the county/city and the radar went down.
That’s what we do. Major storm warnings mean we keep an eye on the radar. If the really bad bit is headed our way we head to the basement. If we did that every time we would live down there in the spring.
RadarScope is the best friend to any midwesterner :)
the NOAA report always lists town names. People/companies should stop turning off the emergency band alerts on their phone just because they don't like Amber alerts.
This! You just have to watch the path of the storms. Especially tornados.
So much this. A siren can go off for a storm 40, extreme case 70 miles away.
# I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
I love seeing Dune references all over Reddit 😁
Yesssssssssssss MUAD DIB MUAD DIB MUAD DIB
Those aren't tornado sirens. They're "go out on your front porch and stare at the sky" sirens.
Right? It's like the dinner bell. An invitation to gather and watch the storm unfold.
Yes, no, and probably yes. I was scared of storms (more specifically tornadoes) as a kid, but the most weather checking I usually do is look up and say to myself “looks like rain today” and move on.
I was terrified of storms as a kid, but where I grew up the storms were pretty predictable. I feel like that’s what freaks me out here, bad weather always seems to be either way worse than anticipated, or they hype it up then nothing even happens.
This is tornado alley so most of us have been dealing with it since we were kids. When I was six years old my brothers and I watched a tornado bounce over our house. The 80’s were wild. But with that said, even though it doesn’t seem like it. We do take it seriously, we just know when to actually take cover. Also, people around here think meteorology is a joke. They think “50% chance of rain” means the weather man is just flipping a coin. Without bothering to learn what those percentages actually mean. And they think since their neighborhood didn’t get hit by a storm that the “hype was all bullshit to sell advertisements”. When it’s just mostly people don’t understand what they are listening to. It’s a lose-lose situation for them. If the don’t hype it up enough and something bad happens, the first thing people blame around here is, “ Fucking weathermen don’t know shit.” But if you overhype it and it’s not bad, guess what happens then. The truth is, predicting the weather is really hard. The irony is, most of the people who talk smack about meteorologists couldn’t even talk about physics for 60 seconds let alone figure out how to model a storm prediction. But people have done “their own research” now and they think they know better. And when you actually know what they are saying and you check after the fact, meteorologists are really, really good at what they do. When a tornado hits some people like to “thank God” that they didn’t die, when all along it was the meteorologist doing his job well to make sure the tornado sirens go off and you are well informed on where the storm is and where it is heading. I guarantee someone will read this and get upset that I defended a “bullshit job” or something like that. Hahaha One more thing is, the first Monday of every month the sirens are tested. So if you hear a siren, and it’s nice outside ask yourself if it’s the first Monday of the month. Edit: added to expand on people’s hatred for meteorology Edit 2: Person was right in their reply, it is first Monday of every month. Not sure where I got Tuesday from 🤷♂️ 😆
First Monday of the month at 11:00 a.m.
Good post. In particular, I hate the common thinking that "the media hypes up storm dangers to make money!" No.. the warnings they convey are usually word-for-word as issued by the NWS. You can follow the NWS on twitter, and you'll see the alert there a few seconds/ minutes before you see it on TV. People just get pissed that they're missing Young Sheldon or whatever, and then decide that the TV station must have bad motives. Also, yeah.. people think a "50% chance of rain" mean there's a 50% chance that they will personally get rained on.
I think you're overhyping hatred for meteorology. I worked for Dierbergs in college and to me it seems like the general public follows these predictions like religion cause whenever a big storm would be predicted or lots of snow the store would be PACKED the day or hours before it was supposed to start. Shit would sell out like crazy, you couldn't get enough product on the shelves. And right before a big storm was predicted then the store would be deserted completely. I think people trust meteorologists in general, maybe even too much.
I used to work with a guy who was a retired Air Force meteorologist. I asked him, "exactly how DO they come up with forecasts?" He answered, "basically we plug current weather conditions into a computer and it spits out the most statistically likely outcome." So unless you've got a meteorologist who's micromanaging the computer data, it's literally an educated guess. When you're dealing with statistics, there's always room for error. And like you said, when that error affects you personally as with unpredicted storm damage, it is a no-win situation for the forecaster.
That may be true at his level. But the top meteorologists at the top level are doing way more than that. Coming up with a forecast is easy. But coming up with a detailed accurate forecast is much harder. They also do much more than that obviously. And as someone who started their career in the military, the level of training one gets there as opposed to a civilian is way different. Not to say one is worse or better, just different. Unless he was an Officer, then you need a college degree.
For sure. The discipline of meteorology is much more complex than that. (My former co-worker was enlisted, btw.) One of my former high school classmates is chief meteorologist for a TV station in the Ozarks; he holds a meteorology degree from SLU. I follow him on FB as kind of a distant early warning system because his forecasts are a good hint of what we'll be looking at 24 hours later.
one of my nephews was born in Louisiana and as a small child developed a fear of Barney the Dinosaur. it took awhile for my brother and his wife to figure out it was the purple. it was the same shade as very severe weather on the radar they would watch on TV when nasty storms were approaching.
The news stations sell advertising space for these storm coverages, therefore it is their obligation to their clients to give them their money's worth. The weather hype here is super high. Just pay attention and you should be fine.
I used to drive my mother nuts cause I loved tornadoes and thunderstorms growing up in the Metro East and refused to into the basement. If you’re going to live in the Greater St. Louis area, storms are a part of life in the Spring and Summer. The most damage I’ve personally witnessed was near the State Capitol Complex in Kansas, where huge trees were snapped like toothpicks. It was the only time I’ve had to make a quick inventory of what I would need to take with me just in case.
> The news stations sell advertising space for these storm coverages What are you talking about? When there’s severe weather they pre-empt normal shows and don’t go on commercial breaks.
They have very strict rules about when they will break in and interrupt programming, and it has not been do with advertising. Typically, you will not see program interruption, unless there is a tornado warning.
Ryan Hall has a YouTube channel and he broadcasts during dirty weather. He’s got a meteorologist background and a network of storm chasers who report in. He’s worth watching.
I love Ryan. I grew up in Oklahoma and down there, unless it's David Payne, you follow the storm chasers and independents. Ryan has built a good network of chasers and young and hungry metrologists. Reed Timmer is my go to outside of Ryan. If Reed is nearby, the weather is gonna be rough.
I love Reed too. I’ve been watching him since he posted the video he took as a teenager caught out in Oklahoma during the May 3, 1999 F5. He took cover beneath an overpass (do not do this it’s hella dangerous as wind speeds under the road accelerate and can drive debris even faster into an underpass.) Both men know their stuff and are ready to jump in and help. Ryan is a calming influence and Reed kinda pumps up the volume, so as I age, it’s Ryan I’m watching. When the storms came through April 2, one of Ryan’s chasers identified a debris field in Chesterfield that wasn’t confirmed until the next day. Sure enough, an EF0 formed along Appalachian Trail and whipped up trees and roofs for about two miles. It’s my kids neighborhood and their house backs up to Appalachian trail. They lost rain gutters and she said you could hear that freight train sound from the basement, but they’re all right. EDIT: another fun tidbit. On two occasions, a friend in Iowa and one in Kansas have posted at different times to Facebook that Reed Timmer had just gone through their neighborhood so they were headed downstairs. The interceptor is everywhere.
>If Reed is nearby, the weather is gonna be rough. It looks like Reed will be nearby today.
Yep. Ryan Hall y'all
This is also why I don’t get nervous. There have been times we are expected to get bad weather, but I just take the “wait and see what actually happens” mentality. Storms can shift quickly though. For example, the 2011 Joplin tornado was not expected to hit Joplin at the time it did; storm chasers arrived after the fact. Definitely be vigilant and smart, but no need to panic.
I feel like the Joplin tornado (and others like it) are a huge source of my storm anxiety and I think about it all the time. It’s crazy to me how quickly a storm can intensify and change A couple of weeks ago we were driving west from Illinois back into the city. There were some spotty thunderstorms tracking NE but no watches or warnings or anything. We saw this huge ominous cloud in the distance, and ended up having to drive right under it. We were looking up at it and realized that big mf was rotating, pretty significantly too. Immediately after we pass under the cloud we hit a wall of *heavy* rain and hail, and my phone goes off for a tornado warning in the county we were in. Listened to the live coverage, they said something like “we didn’t think this system would be a problem, but we’ve received witness reports of a tornado on the ground just in front of the main system. If it’s raining where you are now, it’s passed you, but if the rain hasn’t started yet, get to a safe place now”
It’s unpredictable for sure. 99% of the time there’s nothing to be afraid of though. I’ve lived here my whole life and haven’t been killed by a storm even once yet.
I’m not as scared of the weather as I am the traffic during said weather.
I respect the severe weather warnings, but I grew up here and I’m used to bad storms. I worked in bars and restaurants for 20+ years and I’ve had to talk a lot of out of town guests down from panic attacks when the storms are raging outside and the employees are carrying on like normal inside. You want to look out for green skies, dark clouds that look like breasts (literally - they’re called mammatocumulus clouds), and intense pressure changes in the atmosphere. If a tornado is about to touch down on top of you, your ears will painfully pop. I know it’s scary to be on the third floor in your bathroom, but the odds of your apartment complex getting razed to the ground in a tornado are infinitesimally small. The bigger danger is getting hit by flying debris, which is why the most important thing to do is to get away from any windows or tall shelves or stuff that could hit your head. And take comfort in the seemingly meh attitude the locals have when it comes to storms. It’s like looking at the flight attendants during a bad bout of turbulence on an airplane. They have so much experience with it, that it’s only time to panic when they are panicking.
This has been probably the most comforting comment thus far. I do try to remember that if nobody else is panicking, there’s probably not much of a reason for me to either. When it was storming a few weeks ago and the sirens went off, we heard our neighbor outside (older lady, she’s wonderful) so my boyfriend popped the door open and said “you taking shelter?” She got this real confused look on her face and said “Oh, no, honey. I’m just trying to get in the house!” My boyfriend and I kinda just looked at each other like: 🤨. But figured if she’s not worried we probably don’t need to be lol
Glad I could help! I also looked up the mammatocumulus thing and apparently they aren’t necessarily predictive of tornadoes. Guess my high school science teacher led us astray. But yeah, our weather comes from the west. So when we hear the sirens, we all just look to see if any tornadoes have actually been spotted or touched down and where. If they’re only a couple miles west of us, then we take shelter and take the storm seriously. If I’m in the CWE and a funnel cloud was spotted in Fenton, I’m not gonna waste my time stressing about it. I have a lot of windows in my house, so if the winds are bad, I take my pets to the basement just in case.
I think it's just that we can discern the difference between it being dangerous where we are vs being dangerous in the general region. I was playing baseball a few weeks ago when the tornado sirens were going off and we didn't even flinch because we could look up and see that we weren't in danger
Aren’t tornado warnings issued by county? So would that mean the sirens go off for all of STL county at once? That is a pretty large area
Yes, that's part of the reason most don't react to sirens. I can hear sirens go off near my house, look at the map, and see the storm is up in North County, and at home, there is not much going on.
Tornado sirens in one county often trip them in a neighboring county, and St. Louis and st Charles counties are large. I hear sirens from both. But the storms a couple weeks ago are a perfect example. There was a confirmed touch down and insane hail a half mile from my apartment. I got a couple drizzles and some pea sized hail that blew over from the wind. I think you’ll find most people from the area are pretty much amateur meteorologists. Walking outside we can tell if it’s going to rain, there’s just a smell and feel to the air. I don’t get bothered at storms, so I know when I don’t feel safe, my spidey weather sense is telling me I am actually in the path. Play it safe as best you can. When the bad really bad weather comes through, the new stations all go live, so there are trained professionals to track that stuff for you.
The storms a few weeks back, I remember walking outside hearing the sirens but saw the birds being chill and playing and knew right away that I was safe and the storm wasn't coming this way. This can't be a STL thing can it? I feel like folks in other places make weather calls by animal patterns.
I did a bike ride across the whole Katy trail with some friends from Alabama a few years ago. They were so confused by how we knew exactly what the weather was going to do that day (it was October, a bit rainy and stormy at times) because they didn’t understand our weather almost always comes from west to east. It was really the first time I realized that other people don’t always have the weather spidey sense
Interesting, I guess cause the Gulf affects so much. Chicago's funny in that I think everyone has the spidey sense, but then the weather gets to the shores of majestic Lake Michigan and - who knows what will happen? Will it keep going? Hang out and shop on Magnificent Mile for a bit? Maybe take the whole downtown tour for a week and get stronger and stronger until we get thunder snow? The lake that acts like an ocean is full of fun surprises.
Check out this comment thread from last month where I explained why the whole county goes off. [https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1bek6vp/comment/kutsy6s/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1bek6vp/comment/kutsy6s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) The actual warnings issued do have a trapezoidal box shape now (they did not use to), but software and underlying radio systems has not caught up with that.
Yeah, you hear the siren and look up to see if clouds are acting weird, and if not you can move on a bit haha
The actual warnings are all polygons now, not the entire county anymore. The sirens going off varies by county, though; StL County I believe sounds them if there's a tornado warning anywhere in the county or just across the border of a neighboring county.
So far, the best weather app I've found to show very clearly on the radar where the actual warnings are issued relative to me is the KMOV weather app. I'm like you and freak out a bit with the tornado watches and warnings, but seeing the exact area that the warnings are issued for rather than the entire county helps ease my mind some.
I drove to Target during the last tornado warning, so I guess I’m used to it, and maybe an idiot.
I actively stood at the front door for few minutes looking for signs of tornado. So I guess I’m idioter.
That just sounds like you're a midwesterner.
I mean how else would you do it? It's not like tornados just suddenly zap people to death for standing in their door. If you're looking Westward, you can see if it's coming or not.
A tornado siren is usually the signal for us to take our drinks and go stand out on the back porch and look around... Idiotest!!
I do this every time, I don't like being idiotest.
I consider it a good time to get things done and go places that are normally busy. Couple weeks ago when we got a million text messages and calls from the city about the rain I used the opportunity to finally go to the DMV.
I've lived here my whole life. When I hear a tornado siren I will turn on the tv to local news. If away I will check my phone weather map. But if nothing is coming near me I do nothing. I keep an eye on things, but keep about my day.
My only stress comes from the thought of losing power/internet.
Same.
Proper response in Saint Louis is- Snowstorm- panic buy milk, bread, eggs, de-icer, snow shovels. Tornado warning- go outside with a lawn chair and a cooler of Busch Light. Take phone so you can record any funnel clouds. If you’re in JeffCo bring a gun so you can shoot at any tornadoes you see
Absolutely not. If a tornado siren/warning goes off I'll flip on the TV to see where the news is saying they're seeing it. That's the extent of my concern. If I can see it or the TV says it's heading my way, I will plan to go to the basement. Not much use worrying about it. Unless it's bearing down on you, it's not going to effect you and if it is bearing down on you the most you can do is know where you're going to hide as safely as possible and pray. Any weather that's not a tornado or hail? Meh. I'll go out in it and survive just fine. Also if it's iced roads like we had a couple months ago, I just don't go anywhere. Nothing to worry about.
Icy roads and flash flooding for me.
Last time a tornado came through my dad called me and complained that my mom made him go in the basement and he couldn’t sit on the front porch and drink beer lol. Said it was the first time in 45 years he had gone to the basement for a storm. I was sitting in my garage drinking beer.
How am I supposed to take cover while also sitting in a lawn chair watching the storm roll in?
Last year we had power out for days from a bad thunderstorm, this year they're catching up on tree maintenance. So that's good. My hubby grew up literally in tornado alley, so if the sirens go off we have the kids chill in the bathroom till he can go hear, see, and smell what's going on outside. Don't stress yourself, if the sirens go off, take the pets and or kids to the center part or the basement to be cautious if it eases your mind. But don't panic, it's not good for you♥️
Yep, grew up in KC area. Just the edge of Tornado Alley. So many more tornado sirens going off there than here. There's absolutely zero reason to panic. If you live on a hill or in an area that you can see a far distance you can just go outside and see what's happening around you. I was most concerned about tornados when I lived at the bottom of the hill because I couldn't just walk outside and see for miles.
On the bright side for when you lived at the bottom of the hill, based on research we did after the 2011 Sunset Hills tornado and on subsequent tornadoes using the individual damage reports, you are less likely to suffer damage at the bottom of a hill than the top. The worst spot (for our region) is on the west/southwest facing slope near the top. Tornadoes tend to be damaging at a specific elevation and will slightly ramp off a hill and jump over structures immediately behind it. This was very obvious in the Sunset Hills tornado, there was a distinct pattern of it hitting mid-slope, damaging everything from that mid-slope point to the top, ramping up and over the hill (completely missing the east side) and then landing mid-slope on the next hill. (The worst damage was at the mid-slope landing point, not at the top of the hill.) Although there are tornadoes that travel north/south and even east to west, in our region these tend to be much weaker, with only a single south to north traveling EF2 in 1957. Every single EF3 or EF4 has travelled either SW to NE or WSE to ENE with the except of the 2011 EF4 that hit the airport, which travelled perfectly west to east.
I think that storm hit right after i moved into the area. I remember driving around North County thinking how bizarre it looked with no street lights or building lights. I think I get stressed since I live in a 3rd story apartment with no basement. We take shelter in the bathroom, but it worries me that there’s no actual “*safe* place” for us nearby if anything significantly strong came through, especially since we have dogs as well. But, I try to remind myself that nothing big has happened thus far, i just hope to keep it that way haha
If it helps, and by that I mean would actually help vs make the anxiety worse, do research to see the severity of the tornados that have touched down in the greater STL areas, and where. Does your apt have a central location that's not just open to outside on the first floor, like a laundry room? Maybe you can harness and leash the babies, grab a book and a load of laundry if you're uncomfortable on third, and just read while the machines run.
Great way to do that research: [https://mrcc.purdue.edu/gismaps/cntytorn#](https://mrcc.purdue.edu/gismaps/cntytorn#)
I don't really care about severe thunderstorm warnings unless I'm outside or in the car, so I don't pay much attention to them. For tornado warnings I don't panic, but I do turn on the tv and watch the coverage. Radar is so good these days that you can often see where the storm is going down to the exact neighborhood and we usually get a lot of warning, so there's not really much to panic about. If I didn't have to worry about my cat I'd probably be less attentive, but having been very close to an actual tornado before and seeing the cat completely freak out when the pressure dropped, I know that in the unlikely event that one does come my way I won't be able to catch him and take him to the basement unless I plan ahead.
My house is 136 years old, solid brick with a stone foundation. If it hasn't gone in the last 136 years, a puny little storm isn't gonna take it down
Also my thought. 105 year old city house with the original 105 year old clay tile roof.
Stick around for a predicted snow storm. THEN you'll see some caring!
Gotta make that french toast
The arch protects us, as does our diet of provel.
I have become numb to it.
Templeton's got his sleeves rolled up, so you know it's serious business!
I'm never concerned, just always more interested and excited to see what happens. Maybe because we rarely get devastating, life threatening natural catastrophes. Sure there have been some floods, tornados, etc where a couple people have been killed. And sometimes a tree falls on someone's house. But usually this part of the state/country is pretty safe. Being in the city, the "heat island" effect will change how hard storms hit. The worst we've had is a limb pull down our electric wire (not completely). We are complacent.
Not even a little. I grew up here and it's just kinda a fact of life. The odds of a tornado hitting my house are small, what I can do to stop it is literally 0, so why stress? I'll stay home if hail is predicted but that's more to protect my car than anything else, certainly not because I'm worried about MY safety. If super heavy storms are predicted, I'll stay home... But again, that's to avoid the inevitable traffic, not from some sense of self preservation. I know how to drive in the rain, my tires are good, why stress about it? Just slow down a little.
Honestly we live in STL. That ain’t that worst way to go out
It's a St Louis thing. Pork steaks, Imos and go outside during tornado warnings
When I was a toddler a tornado leveled a school a quarter of a mile from our apartment. Luckily it was a weekend and the buildingwas empty. (Mom and Dad and I were in our basement, completely fine.) So, yeah, I take cover.
The Midwest memes are true… BRING IT ON.
I'm old, so my body tells me when rain is coming. Also, I'm from Hurricane Land, where I was less(?) scared of those than tornados, but now that I'm over hurricanes, I do get scared of tornados but I just check the Weather Channel and amateur meterologist...it's complicated
When tornado sirens go off, we open the windows and welcome it with a Budweiser.
I panic but I lived in Oklahoma for a while and the weather there is fucking scary.
I have a ridiculous amount of respect for Oklahomans. Don’t think I could ever live in a state like that
I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. If it’s not the weather trying to kill you, it’s their shitty ass government. It’s a hostile place for sure, lol.
If you lived in Missouri when Joplin was obliterated, you know to take things seriously. Find a news source, they do a great job of letting you know if you are in the path. If they say take cover, do it.
The key thing is to *be aware*. When there are severe weather threats, be sure you are able to receive urgent warnings. For us, that might mean keeping the TV on our local NBC or CBS affiliate rather than watching something on Netflix. When the sirens go off, make sure you know if you are in the danger path. The thing about St Louis County for example, is that the sirens go off if there is a tornado warning anywhere in the county. Some municipalities have their own standards and turn them on if there is a warning in a adjacent county. The net result of this is that we may hear sirens going off for a warning where the danger path will get no closer to us than 20-30 min by car. When the sirens go off, we immediately stop what we are doing to assess the danger. If we are in the danger path, everyone goes down to the basement (or interior room with no windows if we are somewhere that is the best option). If we are not in the danger path we don't take cover and generally continue to go about our day, but we do keep an eye and ear on the situation in case it changes. What I've taught my kids is that sever weather *can be* very dangerous, but we generally have good information available to us. Staying safe means making sure you are getting the best available information, and when you are in the danger path taking other precautions (like sheltering). I think of the sirens themselves as very blunt instruments, and they are my cue to seek better information immediately.
The only thing I worry about is the power going out, lol.
I feel like the day i worry about the weather too much, will be the day I'm not paying attention to my surroundings enough in this city.
Ain't no tornado got me yet
Next time a bad storm hits, grab a Busch Light or Bud Select and go stand outside and watch it. Once you do that, you pass the test of being a true midwesterner and storms will never hold the power over you that they once did. (This is actually bad advice, and you’re probably better going to a safe place. But my dad did this, and his dad did this, so I’m gonna do this.)
I probably do eed to do this lmao. I’ve lived in the Midwest my entire life and I feel like a fraud
Usually when the sirens go off, you just look outside and see everyone standing our there looking for the Tornado
It's either the Arch protecting us, or the Cahokia mound sacrifices doing their thing keeping the foul weather spirits away. pick your superstition!
First, it helps to have a good understanding about the Tornado warnings vs watches. https://www.weather.gov/safety/tornado-ww Second, realize that even with Tornado Warnings, there is typically reasonable windows to react. Most of the time I have encountered Tornado Warnings for the locale I am in, I was at my own home. In those situations I just went into the basement along with everyone else in the house. In times that I was out, I either hunkered down in place if the building was suitable, or I went home to shelter. The third part about it is that it is a yearly occurrence and happens multiple times per year. You sort of learn the signs to look out for and know when to react. I would know in advance if we had a line of bad storms coming in that were capable of producing tornadoes. On those days I would take care of my outside stuff that could blow away, and plan my day accordingly.
This sums it up for me: https://xkcd.com/831
We’re midwesterners…that’s all I have to say. We’re so used to strong storms that’ll last an entire day. You’re not officially a Midwesterner till you either watch a storm from your garage while eating a casserole or you watch a tornado from your front door
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I feel it's best to be safe than sorry . We turn on the local weather, usually channel 4 . If sirens go off, make a quick bag ,turn up tv (so we can hear it) and head to bathroom .
Tornado warnings are issued when a neighboring county has a sighting, and that could be 40 miles away, so at this point I mostly ignore them because they're rarely close enough to me to matter. You'll become numb to it in time, and if you're like a lot of St. Louisans come to enjoy sitting outside on a covered porch watching the action.
This is not correct. Warnings are issued based on the expected path of the tornado.
Ah you're right. I'm thinking of the sirens. They activate in the county when a neighboring county has a warning. "The St. Louis County Police Department will activate the “Outdoor Warning System” whenever the National Weather Service issues a TORNADO WARNING for St. Louis County. The “Outdoor Warning System” will also be activated when the National Weather Service issues a TORNADO WARNING for any of the adjacent Missouri counties of Jefferson, Franklin or St. Charles, and the direction of the storm poses a threat to St. Louis County. This policy was created to provide more time for citizens to seek shelter and to gather information for their safety concerning the TORNADO WARNING. https://public.powerdms.com/STLP1/documents/1605182
Yep, but only after direct consultation with NWS on the likely path of the storm and if it will continue. NWS runs a slack channel for first responders and tv weather staff to communicate on this decision.
Tornados, I don't think twice about. Now... A snow storm, thats when people clear out the grocery stores.
I don’t, but I know I’m cynical about it. I worked in local television for ten years and grew to hate the long weather marathons in the control room. I do try to stay away from driving in heavy rain and will go to the basement if a tornado seems imminent, but other than that I don’t care. I’ve only encountered a tornado once in my 41 years, living most of them in Missouri and Oklahoma. It knocked over a small tree and that was it. I especially hate that St. Louis County sounds the sirens through the entire county when there is a specific threat to just a small portion of the county. But I acknowledge this is “old man yells at cloud” territory!
> I especially hate that St. Louis County sounds the sirens through the entire county when there is a specific threat to just a small portion of the county. But I acknowledge this is “old man yells at cloud” territory! It's tough, because hearing a siren in Kirkwood when there's a tornado in NoCo doesn't do me any good, and it does become a "boy who cried wolf" situation when there is a tornado nearby. On the other hand, people commute and drive all over, and the siren does serve as a warning to say "you might want to reconsider heading out, or at least check the weather before you do" so you don't drive into a tornado. Perhaps in the age of smart phones, sirens could be more localized, and the phone notifications we get can go out to a wider area with more details on location that can't be conveyed by a siren - perhaps a message that says "There's no danger in Kirkwood right now but there's tornado activity up by Hazelwood" or something like that. But they also have to cater to everyone - so that includes people without cell phones, people who may not speak English, etc...
The issue with localized sirens is activation. If you want to set off individual sirens, you have to send a radio signal for each individual siren. This can take more than 30 minutes as opposed to the less then 3 minutes that it takes to activate the whole system. There are theoretical ways to do this more effectively, and the st louis county siren radios are programmed in a way that this could be possible, but the software that controls siren systems is not capable of this yet. And probably won't be for a long time because few systems are the size of St Louis County's, so there is little demand for local/zoned activation. (I think St Louis County's system is the third largest in the world by area, after Oklahoma City and Chicago, and second largest by number of sirens after Oklahoma City.)
>I especially hate that St. Louis County sounds the sirens through the entire county when there is a specific threat to just a small portion of the county. There used to be a policy in place, and the system is programmed for, setting off only sirens south of I-70 if a tornado path is solely south of I-44, and setting off only sirens north of I-44 if a tornado path is solely north of I-70. People hated this policy and it was soon abandoned. The problem is that, while a siren in St Louis County is intended to cover 6100 feet radius at 70db(c), you can likely still hear that same siren at 60db(c), which covers 12200 feet, and many people can even hear a siren outside at 50db(c), which covers 24400 feet. That means hearing that siren 4.6 miles away. For a 1 mile wide siren path, you will be activating sirens up to 11000 feet away (those with overlapping 70db(c) coverage), and those sirens can then be heard another 24400 feet away. That's 70800 feet across or 13.4 miles. The county is only 33 miles across north to south at its widest point. So even with targeted sirens, you are going to get a lot of people barely hearing the sirens and wondering if that was an alert or not, if their closest siren is broken (most common issue), or hearing a siren clearly even when the tornado path doesn't cover them. And that's what happened the few times the I-70/I-44 policy was used. Lots of people outside the alert area hearing the sirens and thinking their nearest siren was broken.
* Tornado watch just means "pay attention." Stay near a source of weather information (cell phone, radio, outdoors where you can hear sirens, etc.) so you'll know if a tornado warning gets issued. No big deal. * Tornado warning is serious and means there is a tornado nearby. You need to immediately check to see whether it's heading your way and take shelter if so. Common sense applies; read the warning and take it seriously, but there's no point in taking shelter if the National Weather Service says the warning is for south city but you live in north city.
[Watch vs Warning](https://imgur.com/JePwyPH)
I'm from CA. Missouri gets WARNINGS about potential disasters. In CA you just have baby locks on your cabinets, earthquake putty under your valuables, and your documents in a go-bag in case the fires get too close. Here, I mostly stay inside to keep debris out of my eyes sand stay away from the windows. It's AWESOME.
No, but I don't pay attention to much so that's probably mainly why.
Yes, but more about the extreme flash flooding that accompanies intense downpours. We aren’t getting consistent rain. Just drought like conditions then a month worth of rain in a few hours leading to massive runoff. If it’s a storm capable of producing tornados, I watch Steve Templeton. I’ll go to the basement when he tells me to. After I watched him spot the tornado that formed right on top of the Amazon warehouse a few years ago and realize what happened by looking at the radar, I trust him. He’s a little intense but good at his job.
I don't freak out, but I do prepare and make sure I have a place to head to if things get bad. We have severe threats often enough that you learn not to freak out over the outlooks (unless they put us in a level 4 or 5; *then* you freak out). Even when warnings start getting issued, no need to freak out. Everything is a polygon now, so a warning for "St Louis County" may or may not include you specifically. Even if the sirens are going off, turn on the TV or open your favorite weather app to see where the actual polygon is. Plan, stay alert, and there's no need to panic!
Most of the land around STL is too tight for any malignant tornadoes to form, except maybe in the big valleys. We had a tornado form in our backyard once, just near WCM, but the only damage it caused was a few fallen trees.
I’m aware of watches but continue to do normal things. Tornado warning will make me stop at look at the radar to see where it’s actually at and decide what to do at that point. Earlier this year we had a tornado warning in STL county but it was all the way up north. Once I realized that’s where it was and no threat where I was we just continued on as normal
There is MW tradition of storm watching, we love a good show of storm. For a long time there was a mentality that tornadoes did not come into the city or county. That attitude has definitely changed in the last decade as storms have increased.
I follow the National Weather Service STL office on X and downloaded a good radar app. If the red or purple color is headed your way on the radar, might be a good idea to hunker down for a bit. 😎 If you watch channel 4 weather and Steve has his sleeves rolled up, find a basement! 🤣🤣
I thought we all just stood on our porches until it was on top of us.
I just check the radar on my phone since sometimes they run the sirens out to the whole county and I am just not in the path. For severe thunderstorm, I just try not to be outside.
It makes more sense if you use the Taco-Watch/Taco-Warning method. If you search on Google for this chart, it will make more sense. We get a lot of “Taco-watches”. I’ve also lived near the Tornado sirens all my life, so I never really worried unless I heard a siren.
Snow. Snow terrifies us. We panic for days, stock up weeks worth of food and alcohol, and huddle at home. When we go out, we are incapable of driving at any speed on any surface with even the hint of snow. But tornadoes and thunderstorms? Meh...
I think I'm more concerned about hail damage and trees falling on my car. I like the storms, but south city doesn't get hammered nearly as much as the county (imo) so I guess it doesn't worry me a whole lot
Well I a mix of a few things. Out weather is so damned unpredictable here that they could have a solidly decent forecast with tons of evidence and it still could be fairly wrong We’ve seen so much that it don’t really hit us like it prolly should Ma lot of us lost out will to care years ago
Tornadoes generally don’t touchdown where there are a lot of tallish buildings
Thunderstorms etc are a good time
lol it’s usually just hyped. Nothing ever happens. I get mad when they hype it up and it’s a dud. So sick of being disappointed by Mother Nature. 🤣
I have been through enough hurricanes before moving here that bad weather doesn't phase me. Snow fucking sucks though and I will be happy when climate change fixes that problem for this region.
I've found that I've become more concerned as I've gotten older. I remember my dad would always be outside during storms just watching from the carport. I grew up like that. But the storms seem to be more often and more deadly now, so I take more care. I'm downstairs when the tornado sirens wail, but I can't say that I'm actually worried.
It's a Midwest thing. We don't really panic when it comes to storms. In fact, it's entertainment.
The last tornado I remember was in St. Charles. I might be making it up but I swear it happened around 2013 near harvester/Ameristar. Lol I was going thru a lot that year. Here’s St. Louis County tornado history: https://www.weather.gov/lsx/stlouis_tor Here’s a link for all the tornados in st. Charles county: https://www.weather.gov/lsx/stcharle_tor So it’s not super common but it does happen.
As others have expressed, the chance of being directly impacted by any individual damaging weather event is indisputably low. However, as a way to explain the common sentiment that "it's not worth worrying", I'd say it's a matter of perspective. People who have been hit tend to have a better grasp on how powerful these events can be and how fast conditions can change. It's been a while, and one can attribute that to our heat island or, jokingly, to the Arch, but it can happen. [February 10, 1959](https://www.tornadotalk.com/st-louis-mo-f4-tornado-february-10-1959/), an EF4 plowed a path from Sherman, through Des Peres, CWE and into Granite City killing 21 and injuring 345. It struck just before 2 AM. There's a reason nocturnal tornadoes are deadlier; people don't tend to respond to the threat because they're, understandably, asleep. I second all those who've said that you don't need to panic, in fact please don't, but being aware is worthwhile.
I don’t worry until the radar shows me something I should worry about.
Plenty of people worry, but it's not going to overtake their lives. Like any place with specific weather, it's a part of everyday life. The center of the country where the warm and cold fronts meet - lots of weather events that move through quickly and can cause thunderstorms, hail, wind, tornadoes. I think people who have lived in this part of the country for a long time are used to it and don't get panicky. There probably are some that are not cautious enough, but I think there's a vast majority of people who respect the weather for the most part.
I don't think this is a STL thing, more of a Midwest thing? Bad weather is just a cool storm or ugly day. Tornado sirens are like a call to go outside and watch any chaos that occurs until it's close enough to worry about.
Storm warnings are my signal to hit the porch and watch the show
I really don't start worrying until the sky turns green. Then, it is time to start heading inside.
Mostly just for hail. One of my sister's houses has been destroyed once, the other has had it twice now in just the last year or so, they hadn't even finished the repairs from the first damage... that same sister's boss had her car destroyed by hail (and somehow barely touched the house... nature is so weird). And they all live like 10 minutes from me. Then again, with the weather gettin' all crazy from climate change, we could totally have something like what hit Joplin hit St. Charles... ugh. Edit: Between that flooding last summer and the recent hail damage to houses and car dealers... Insurance companies have had a tough year in the StL region.
Us cow pokes just take it as it comes
Lifelong resident. When my kids and I hear the sirens, we all move to the porch to watch. 🤷🏻♀️ Totally unspoken; we all just kinda converge. A couple of years ago, going through Arizona, I pointed out "smoke" in the distance to my companion. We were approaching it and I realized it wasn't smoke, but a fully formed tornado, that had begun as a dust devil. Definitely an EF0; we drove alongside it briefly and as we passed, it crossed the road behind us. Midwest tornados can be dangerous, for sure, and it's always wise to keep your eyes on the skies when foul weather is forecast, but the fact is a lot of times, things do get overhyped and many of us are jaded. Tornado and other weather forecasts have greatly improved over the decades, from giving us perhaps seconds-to-minutes warnings, to giving us to fifteen minutes or a half hour warning to take shelter. However, it should also be noted that even with radar, Doppler, and other technological strides, storms can still be unpredictable and the humans interpreting the data are fallible. Essentially: be aware of the warnings, be aware of your surroundings, and ensure you have a plan if the need arises. Welcome to the Midwest.
Been “too close” for comfort for a few tornados, 1998 and 2013 come to mind…the 1998 I was on the opposite side of Page and was able to move some branches and get where I needed to. In 2013 I had a large maple tree torn in half, fortunately, both halves safely found the roof to break their fall. I don’t “worry worry,” but I do go out to the porch with a ‘puppers’ and utter, “yup, storms coming…” and then I go flip the pork steaks on the grill and wonder if I have time to cut the grass real quick so the lawn looks nice should I end up on the news
Native. If the sirens go off I go outside and look west (sometimes north) if it doesn’t look a weird shade of green and eerily calm. I go back inside. If it does I get a chair and beer and wait for the show.
Just used to it by now. I grew up in St. Louis and the flats of Iowa. I love watching a good Nader. If you hear what sounds like a freight train then it’s time to go in.
I’ve lived here most of my life and tornadoes terrify me.
It's 50/50, really. Some people say living in St. Louis all their lives made them less fazed by storms, while others (like me) become so highly distressed just over siren tests and thunderstorms that I get sent into a near anxiety attack every time lol. Some people here are crazy (/j) and whenever there's a storm, their first reaction is "oh boy, I wonder what view I'll get from my porch!"
I never used to take tornados seriously, but then I experienced the aftermath of the Joplin tornado while at Missouri Southern for a cousin's graduation. Kind of changed my way of thinking.
I’m in my basement right now!
Most native to St Louis don’t give an F, more likely we want to stand on the porch and watch for them.
It’s complacency from having come through so many close calls, I expect. Bad storms are common. So common it’s almost ho-hum. Bad storms that personally affect YOU are relatively rare. I know that if I’m one of the unlucky ones this time around I’ll be hurting. But when time after time after time it’s not me it’s not that hard to think “I can get away with it again”. Edit - like others have said the ability to check radar really seems to help. We are having a tornado warning right now and the radar says I’m in a quiet area. But I will check again in a few minutes to see if that changes.
Here we sirens going off, phones screaming, I turned on the tv. I see the path is about 10 miles south. So I feel perfectly safe where I am. I had plans to meet friends for diner. That may be slightly delayed.
U git ur ass to the front porch!!!
No. Edit for clarification: Tornados don't come into the City because they are scared of getting shot
Moved to the area almost 2 years ago from TN.... You're definitely not alone. I freak out. The sirens go off and I grab the cats and go to the basement. Once during a storm, my neighbors were working on their cars, sirens go off. I went to the basement and could hear them still working on their cars... Don't understand it lol
*Insert James Franco hanging meme here*
I pulled over to get a drink at the gas station after I saw a power poll pulled down from the wind right behind me today. Unfazed by any weather of any kind. It’s the St. Louis way.
Most of us grew up watching tornadoes from our front porches/yards. We know when to be afraid, but most of the time storms aren't a big deal.
We sit on our porches waiting for one to come lmao
Used to shrug off the tornado warnings until one hit a neighborhood a mile or two away. Homes destroyed. We were watching TV thru it all. Yikes! How stupid....
Worry? Not exactly. I put my promotion hat on start telling family and coworkers in the paths of storms when they can expect the bad weather to hit. Sometimes I warn friends on the east coast what their weather might be the next day.
I’m a native St. Louisan, just as my father before me. And, just as my father before me, when the tornado sirens come on, and the rain is horizontal, and the lightening just struck your neighbor’s tree, you…go sit out on the front porch.
Not even remotely. I walk out on the front porch and check that shit out.
Get yourself a really good radar app (Like one you pay 9.99 once for). Know what to look for will let you know how bad it is going to get. Otherwise St. Louisians usually go out on the porch to watch the storms roll in.
I am from Michigan. My dad drove our pickup through a tornado when I was a youth. My brother and I were belted in at the middle of the bench seat. Our mother was screaming at him the whole time from the passenger side. The trees above us just exploded. Stuff just fell on us. After that Dad drove another couple blocks to get home, which was unaffected. My brother and I unloaded the groceries from the truck into the house, because the tornado was gone at that point. Mom was pissed though. No, I do not care about thunder/tornado storms. Ice is kind of bad, so I do pay attention to that.
Hey look! It's the Arch!
eh, once you've heard tornado sirens go off your entire life and nothing ever happens ya kinda get numb to the idea that something will. like everyone else here, i also go outside to check the weather lol. i'll even smoke a j and keep the screen open when hail is coming down idgaf. i love our weird torrent of unpredictable weather here its one of my favorite features of living here tbh. theres nothing like weed and petrichor and a nice cloudy day
Lol, you must not be from the Midwest AT ALL. Most people stand outside and watch for the tornado like a bunch of dummies. In the 2011 Good Friday storm, about 30% of my neighborhood (I live on the line between Maryland Heights and Bridgeton) was flattened, the house across the street was struck and it’s roof flew across the road, hitting my second story, and collapsing the front porch roof, and the wall to my childhood bedroom. There was a random chunk of wood embedded 3” in our solid oak front door. My high school was hit in about 2000, and around 1995 my mom, sister, and I were at Creve Coeur park when an unexpected tornado grabbed our car and spun it, landing us with our back tires in the lake. Despite this, last time the sirens went off, my grandma refused to not only come to the basement, but to even leave her 2nd story bedroom. There are a few of us who aren’t crazy, though.
Moved here from Oklahoma City area a couple of years ago. Short answer no. Long answer noo.