OT: Dangerous weather headed for St. Louis!

[KillerB]

Hopefully no tornado damage for you tonight?

We just got some heavy rain.. so got off easy compared to others tonight.

Just here an unconfirmed report.. a plane full of people was lifted off the ground and slammed back down.. not confirmed yet.
Lambert officials are supposed to be holding a news conference right about now.

[KillerB]

I'm watching the first live shot from Lambert..
The control tower has no power.. black.. a lot of windows blown out.
Video pretty incredible of the damage there.
No reports of serious injuries.
Airport shutdown for the night.
Planes being diverted around the region.
Numerous cars damaged.. one woman in a minivan with her kids.. said the win picked her minivan up and slammed it down.
Reporter mentioned people trapped in planes on the tarmac.. but still not confirmed by airport officials.

[Bravesfan]

I'm watching the first live shot from Lambert..
The control tower has no power.. black.. a lot of windows blown out.
Video pretty incredible of the damage there.
No reports of serious injuries.
Airport shutdown for the night.
Planes being diverted around the region.
Numerous cars damaged.. one woman in a minivan with her kids.. said the win picked her minivan up and slammed it down.
Reporter mentioned people trapped in planes on the tarmac.. but still not confirmed by airport officials.

Wow! Amazing no one was seriously hurt or killed in this! Someone was looking out for these people.

[jasonpeoria911]

Man what a crazy night in STL metro. I had just finished house work and saw the tornado warning for St. Charles County. So I figured I would just pop up the live scanner on RadioReference and heard the New Melle tornado wipe out a few neighborhoods. I figured it would just be a quick touchdown tornado but I listened to this puppy dart across the northern suburbs of STL on the STL North County Fire live scanner.

This tornado caused a massive amount of damage to the N. STL Suburbs, much more than what all the media is talking about with the Lambert Airport. Hopefully we won't hear of any fatalities tomorrow.

Jason

[Bravesfan]

Man what a crazy night in STL metro. I had just finished house work and saw the tornado warning for St. Charles County. So I figured I would just pop up the live scanner on RadioReference and heard the New Melle tornado wipe out a few neighborhoods. I figured it would just be a quick touchdown tornado but I listened to this puppy dart across the northern suburbs of STL on the STL North County Fire live scanner.

This tornado caused a massive amount of damage to the N. STL Suburbs, much more than what all the media is talking about with the Lambert Airport. Hopefully we won't hear of any fatalities tomorrow.

Jason

Yeah, that's true. You're right, hopefully there aren't any fatalities that the media does not know about yet. We'll see what happens.

[Da Coach]

Some video reports-

http://www.kmov.com/video?id=120523519&sec=549502

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/23/missouri.severe.weather/?hpt=T1

[Bradleyguy10]

I come home to visit family and I get a night spent in the basement! Those were some intense storms...glad no one was killed (I haven't heard of any).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocbvtfpHG9M

[Stryker]

My roommate is a chaser and was able to get very good video of this tornado, and was a first responder to the damage at the airport. His video was on the weather channel last night and this morning and his chasing partner was just interviewed live on the weather channel about half hour ago. Pretty crazy storm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x9wJL1jvBo&feature=channel_video_title

[electricmayhem]

Not that it's all about money, but does he sell the video to the weather channel? great video -- so sorry to see the damage. i left stl wednesday night to come home after two days there on a biz trip.

[Stryker]

Yes most of the time if it is a relevent storm and they have good footage chaser will sell their live video streams to the media. Earlier this month my roommate got one of his videos on Good Morning America and the Today Show. It's not really lucrative but it can cover the expenses of the chase.

[jasonpeoria911]

Freelance Journalists are relatively popular in bigger cities and especially with storm chasing. Some media places don't want to pay for a news crew to be on overnight, so freelancers will go to incident scenes and shoot some video and then sell it to a TV station. A dude I know in Vancouver does it quite a bit. Some incidents pay quite a bit, pays for most of his vacations usually.

Theirs a few other chase teams out there right now catching tornadoes for a new series on The Discovery Channel this fall.

Jason