Thunderstorms roar through southwest Illinois, hitting Highland area particularly hard
Highland-area residents woke up to a bright rainbow Sunday morning after being hit hard by a storm Saturday evening.
Geof Ely, 57, witnessed some of the damage while taking his wife to work.
“There were big trees down, a couple of roads that were blocked off,” he said. “Sidewalks were flipped up when the trees fell over. Garages, power lines ... It was pretty bad here.”
Ely said the storm destroyed a shed full of equipment at Mettler Development on Highland Road. Owner Jason Mettler is developing Ely’s subdivision, Carbay Crest, on the edge of town.
Ely shot a photo of the rainbow about 7:15 a.m. Sunday from the subdivision’s main street. It was one of several photos posted on the Highland Illinois Community Facebook page.
“Highland will survive,” one person commented.
Highland wasn’t the only metro-east community hit Saturday evening by two major storm systems that produced heavy rain, high winds and large hail but no known tornadoes.
St. Louis TV stations broke into regular programming Saturday evening to report on the storms, which generally traveled northeast from Missouri into Illinois.
Rotating winds had prompted the National Weather Service to issue tornado warnings, in addition to severe thunderstorm warnings. People in vulnerable areas were told to find safe places to take cover between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m.
“It came through with a fury, really,” KDSK meteorologist Tracy Hinson told viewers early Sunday morning. “We had some large hail, golf-ball size in Weldon Springs (Missouri). We had some 60 mile per hour wind gusts elsewhere.”
TV stations reported that the storm tore roofs off homes, a pole barn and Tri Ford car dealership and destroyed a backyard playhouse in the Highland area. Downed trees closed Douglas Road near St. Jacob. One person saw a flagpole snap in half in the Lebanon area.
Downed power lines caused electrical outages in Madison and St. Clair counties, mainly affecting about 300 homes and businesses in downtown Belleville and 1,100 in Edwardsville, according to Ameren Illinois spokeswoman Marcelyn Love.
No serious injuries were reported.
“(There was) no confirmed tornado that made its way all the way down to the ground,” Hinson said Saturday night, after the storms had left the metro-east. “But certainly the sign that we had rotation and a report of a funnel cloud at Scott Air Force Base.”
The northern storm system was the stronger of the two. It traveled through Madison, Bond, Fayette and Marion counties. The southern system went from St. Clair County into Clinton and Washington counties.
FOX2 meteorologist Chris Higgins interviewed Highland-area weather watcher Steve Martin, who was checking out damage along Douglas Road on Saturday night.
“It was either like a very hard inline wind or a small spin-up of some sort,” Martin said. “It took a roof off of a farmer’s house ... and took part of a roof off of a machine shed.”
This story was originally published March 28, 2021 at 11:45 AM.
