1967-01-24 St. Louis County Tornado F4

NancyM

EF2
Joined
Jun 14, 2013
Messages
192
The 1967-01-24 St. Louis County F4 tornado was part of a larger outbreak, unusual for that time of year. There were 3 fatalities.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lsx/?n=jan241967tornado

A whirlwind tour - sorry about the pun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePRkRvMQB-w

http://picasaweb.google.com/rb.brigitte/RiverBendTornado#5368869879590004802

http://www.photosbyat.com/gallery/1562878_VAGZQ#!i=75501479&k=rV4zm

The telephone call the Weather Bureau received shortly after 7:00pm might well have been from my father. Our power went out at approximately 7:05pm, my father looked out the front door and saw the tornado in a flash of lightening and we went to the basement. I believe the tornado was about 1 mile west of us when my father saw it and hit our subdivision .5 mile north of us, i.e., it was moving NW. As soon as we came out of the basement my father called the Weather Bureau. We didn't hear sirens until about 20-25 minutes later, if my memory serves me correctly.

The pictures and first hand stories at the picasa - River Bend Tornado site are particularly interesting. I was quite familiar with that area, about 1 mile west of our subdivision, because friends from high school lived there. I suspect this was a multi-vortex tornado, at least in this part of the path. Gas station attendants who were about 1 mile south of the tornado said they saw "3" tornadoes. The person who posted the River Bend pictures makes a case for "2" tornadoes based on the location of damage.

One thing I've always been confused about is an old silo in our subdivision left standing from when it was a dairy farm. It was about .2 mile from the damage in our subdivision, but I don't remember any damage between it & the path of the tornado, which was fairly narrow. I don't know if this was damage from a vortex or just from straight line storm winds. However, that was 46 years ago and memories can be flaky.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Part of a larger outbreak:
http://madweather.blogspot.com/2012/01/tornado-outbreak-of-january-24-1967.html

There's more documentation of this outbreak on Wikipedia.


I didn't properly label the last two links in the first post:

The picasaweb link is a house-by-house inventory of damage in the River Bend Estates subdivision, which was the first subdivision hit. It's very nicely done. I've been trying to find the source of the aerial view in hopes of finding one of my subdivision, but I think she uploaded a photo. I've found no photos of the damage in my subdivision.

The last link at photosbyat is newspaper articles.



I have found additional comments from first hand accounts that there were "2" or "3" tornadoes.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top