Mediocre Snowstorm Shuts Down A Major U.S City, Again

Just lovely. Highways 40 and 64 in the St. Louis
metro area on Friday. 

A winter storm is moving west to east across the central U.S. having started in the Rockies, moving through the mid-Mississippi Valley, with an eye on eventually getting to places like Virginia.

For areas in the Midwest being affected, it's a pretty big snowstorm. It won't be the worst ever, but it's substantial, dumping six to 12 inches in a wide swath from Kansas to the Mid-Atlantic.

By the way, us New Englanders are going to completely miss this snowstorm. It's passing by well to our south.

This pretty good but not enormous storm has had an outsized effect in St. Louis, Missouri. As the snow flew, cars also flew off icy highways. The result was absolute gridlock Friday evening and overnight. People were stuck local freeways for many hours as people got stuck on icy roads, or people couldn't get past traffic accidents.

Video is at the bottom of this post.

People in the St. Louis area reported that it took five or six hours to get home from work on trips that normally take 15 minutes or so. As of early this morning, there are reports of numerous people in cars and trucks stuck on Interstate 44 in Eureka, Missouri, west of St. Louis, with no end in sight.

I get it that St. Louis is not exactly in the Arctic, and they aren't nearly as used to snowstorms as, say,Minneapolis or Buffalo.

Timing had a lot to do with this mess, as it does often when cities get gridlocked in snowstorms. The worst of the storm came into St. Louis during the day, when everybody was at work. When they tried to get home, chaos ensued, as they say.

The snowy traffic nightmare continued well into the night around
St. Louis. This is Interstate 44 on a traffic cam image

This is the second time this winter that a major metropolitan area got gridlocked by a daytime snowstorm. In November, the same thing happened in the New York City metro area.

People then were trapped in cars almost overnight. That snowstorm dropped a whopping six inches of snow. You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal, but whatever.

Before I get too smug as a winter-hardy Vermonter, I've seen this situation happen around here, too.

It  usually takes me a half hour to get home to St Albans from work in Burlington. I can remember being trapped on local roads and Interstate 89 for up to three hours during snowstorms.

It seems like everywhere, people just don't know how to drive in the snow. Or don't want to drive properly in the snow.

I guess that's human nature, so we will always hear of these tales of people stuck unnecssariily in big storms.

Here's motorists trying, and largely failing, to move along Interstate 44 in downtown St. Louis last evening:

More Incredible Hail Battered The Midwest Last Week.

A snow plow clears massive amounts of hail out
of an Omaha, Nebraska parking lot last week. 

Very much like the past two springs, this year seems to be a very bad season for hailstorms in the United States, even as the tornado count remains below average.

Destructive hailstorms this time hit especially hard around Omaha, Nebraska and the St. Louis, Missouri suburbs.

These storms came after a series of hailstorms caused nearly $2 billion in damage earlier this spring in Texas.

The Omaha World-Herald reported that hail piled up 18 to 24 inches deep after the hail washed down slopes, clogged storm sewers. Leaves brought down from trees by the hail contributed to the clogged drains.

Front end loaders and snow plows cleared streets of the heavy hail, leaving it in big piles that resembled the aftermath of a large blizzard.

At least one motorist had to be towed out after becoming stuck in the deep hail. Others waited for people to bring snow shovels to dig their cars out.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported hail Wednesday was as big as grapefruit and softballs in some areas, particularly around Cottleville,, Weldon Spring and  St. Charles, Missouri.

The paper said large hail smashed out car windows and dented vehicles at a Mercedes Benz dealership in O'Fallon, Missouri. There was at least $100,000 in damage at the dealership alone.

One small tornado touched down outside of St. Louis during the storms. Large trees fell in Ferguson, Missouri, blocking streets.

Here's a news clip of the hail piles in Omaha:



Here's some damaging hail pinging down on a St. Louis suburb. Bet the cars in the video didn't fare well:

Butterfly-Shaped "Rain Showers" On St. Louis Weather Radar Turned Out To Be Butterflies

National Weather Service radar in St. Louis, Missouri
captured a butterfly shaped cloud of monarch
butterflies passing overhead on their
migration to Mexico.  

A really awesome and cool "weather disturbance" of sorts passed over the St. Louis, Missouri metro area last week, the web site CityLab reports.

National Weather Service radar in St. Louis showed what looked to be showers, or tornado debris, or something, constantly changing shape as it moved southward toward Mexico.

All other indications showed there were no storms or weather disturbances that could cause rain, tornadoes or anything else of note in Missouri. It was a really nice day.

For awhile, the "disturbance" heading toward Mexico took on the shape of a giant butterfly over  St. Louis and most of its suburbs.

It turns out the radar was picking up a giant flock of monarch butterflies migrating south toward Mexico.  The monarchs were really cool and thoughtful, in my opinion, to fly in the formation of a giant butterfly as they headed south.

Monarchs that live in the summer east of the Rocky Mountains fly to a specific mountain area in Mexico, where they hang out in oyamel fir trees for the winter. (They can't survive the cold winters in most of the United States.)

They also reproduce over the winter in Mexico, and the next generation of monarchs fly north for us to enjoy each spring.

That such a large number of monarchs is a good sign, as CityLab notes. Habitat loss, extreme weather and possibly pesticides have decimated the numbers of these beautiful butterflies, so here's hoping this radar image shows they're hanging in there.

Or maybe their dwindling numbers appeared on the radar to tell us to do things to protect them and let their numbers recover.

Extremely Cool Time Lapse Of Storm Over Missouri

Monday evening's storm loom over Ferguson, Missouri.
The storm was partly credited for calming down protests
in the town over the police shooting of an unarmed
black teenager.  

For fans of weather porn, the viral video in this post hits the spot.

It's a great time lapse of a strong thunderstorm moving over the St. Louis suburbs the other night.

(Weather porn, for the uninitiated, is video or images of really big, bad storms, so the video in this post is definitely SFW)

The storm also hit troubled Ferguson, Missouri, where there have been sometimes violent clashes between protestors and police over the past two weeks.

The storm briefly disrupted demonstrations, and is said to be partly responsible for interrupting things long enough to slightly reduce tensions there.

The really cool time lapse video is below: