2026-04-24-27 EVENT: OK/TX/AR/LA/MS/MO/KS

[Dan Robinson]

The squall line on the cold front spun up at least two QLCS tornadoes east of St. Louis as it ingested the old outflow. The first was between New Baden and Trenton, the second between Germantown and Carlyle. Both had very clear TDSs on radar. The Germantown-Carlyle TDS was large, indicating a likely larger and stronger tornado than the first.

I did a quick survey of the New Baden-Trenton tornado path (it's 3 miles from home). Remarkably, it has an almost identical path to the March 14, 2025 EF2, only shifted north by about 1/2 mile! This was a relatively weak tornado, EF1 max. The worst damage was on Highway 160 south of Trenton, where a farmstead had extensive tree damage and a single main power pole along the highway was toppled. I could not get a good look at structures on the property, but they did not appear to have much if any damage. There was no structural debris downstream. I only found tree damage at one other location to the southwest, and I did not see any other power poles toppled. Power is out along I-64 from the rest areas to the New Baden exit, but I did not find the source of that.

 

[John Farley]

A couple of places where it would not surprise me if there was a tornado would be Florissant and southeast of Sullivan, both in MO. There was a report of 4 structures destroyed in Florissant, with a TOR warning at the time. Looking at radarscope, I could not see the basis for that warning, but unlike a lot of others that did not seem entirely warranted to me, this one may have verified. I also would be rather surprised if there was not a tornado southeast of Sullivan - there was a persistent velocity couplet there, even a few frames before the warning was issued, and there appeared to be a pronounced correlation coefficient dropout coincident with the couplet for several scans. That is a hilly, wooded, rather thinly populated area; if a survey is done, I suspect there would be evidence of a tornado there.

 

[Boris Konon]

Time sensitive (5:20pm CDT): Take a look at this Google traffic map. Just incredible. Rush hour in St. Louis, and all green. I've *never* seen this here before outside of winter storms.

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

So the threat of svr wx and no one went to work or left early?

This practice IMHO is doing more harm than good, esp. from an economic POV. It is a non-trivial amount of $$ lost when you shut down or "panic" like this. W/ time more and more, we are being "held hostage" by the wx.

Don't get me wrong, there are times when you need to shut things down/evacuate/leave early, but, and a lot of this is due to how the MSM hype wx and the "end of days" b/c of climate change, there comes a point of diminishing returns! And IMHO, we crossed that point years ago. Even typical inclement wx that has low risk overall (snow esp.), *panic* and shutdown no matter what. As I said in another post, the forecast science has advanced tremendously in the last 30 years alone, but we do not seem to be taking full advantage of this progress.

An example, say a HIGH risk day for central OK is forecast. These days we can nail the timing of where and where the storms will develop very well. So if no storms are forecast before 6pm local time, is that a reason to dismiss all schools early and have ppl leave early from work?

Again, the costs of doing this are non-trivial, and can be quantified very well. However, there is no guarantee tornadoes that occur will be intense/long-tracked and even if so, hit major populated areas, and you have more fine-tuned timing available. Also, not all svr risks are created equal, just b/c you have a MDT or HIGH risk, does not necessarily = big tornado outbreak, but the MSM and officials don't seem to make this distinct a lot. It's not "one size fits all," but it seems a lot that is how it is treated.

See the problem there? This goes back to the outdated notion "better safe than sorry, and also, and you *will* see officials and politicians say this even today, "you never know w/ the wx!" Weasel "get-out-jail-free" excuse!

 

[Boris Konon]

I could be way off but it appears STL WFO is issuing tornado warnings on side lobes.

Side lobes in velocity products are a well-documented issue in dual-pol literature, so no real excuse for this. One should know all the artifacts/shortcomings of radar before operationally using it for warnings.

 

[Jesse Risley]

NSSL mobile did do a sounding around 19z from Fayetteville Illinois which was right on the main boundary near US 64.

A few things I observed...

1. Early morning convection stabilized the atmosphere north of the boundary. The air immediately north of the boundary never recovered though further north it did so there were storms along the warm front, but they weren't as severe as they could have been and I'm not sure there have been many verified tornado reports in that region.

2. The best forcing for ascent over the most open warm sector arrived pretty late, which is why why you saw the tornadoes supercells down in Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri late in the game. I think this precluded things popping further north in Southern Illinois in the PDS watch, but I also noticed that low level lapse rates were poor down there.

3. Renewed convection along the boundary back towards Kansas City probably helped to further impede discrete supercell development that could have rooted in the boundary and taken advantage of better instability had earlier convection not persisted into the noontime hours.

There may be other factors I overlooked but that's what was most apparent to me. I saw a brief, weak tornado northwest of Bethalto on the storm that came through St. Charles County later in the afternoon but the rest of the storms were just anemic and died once they got east of the metro area.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

So, what happened Monday? We were in MO and IL, SPC issued a PDS watch, we watched one very small cell in far southern IL struggle and quickly die, even in later updates their MD mentioned strong tornadoes, with cells ahead of and in the main line to the west, it was a complete and total bust, only 3 tornado reports despite 3 tornado watches and a MOD risk. To the eye the cells we were on looked "soft" and were elongated NW-SE. One cell in MO west pf PBF did have a good hook briefly but also did not produce. The only tornado in the mai area was of the QLCS variety. Not ragging on SPC at all, but in my 30 plus years of chasing, I am hard pressed to remember too many forecasts that busted this hard. Probably good fodder for some future study on what exactly went wrong. I do give some props to the HRRR and other CAMs, they were never very impressed, especially for any cells SE and east of the primary line in MO and IL.

Headed home to Atlanta (not chasing today, looks messy and I have some commitments tomorrow.) Going to likely be a long down period ahead, I feel sorry for folks with chase vacations or in tours in early May.