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Blown Away: The St. Louis Storms

July 21, 2006

I had a friend invite me to go to the Cardinals game on Wednesday night. He had acquired four free tickets to some rather nice seats in the Red Bird Club section, so Kendall and I decided to go. We had never eaten at a Rally's or a Checkers so we went to the one that is a couple blocks down from the stadium. We ordered our food and had a seat on the concrete tables during this nice, warm, sunny day. It started to cloud up behind me and get really dark so I automatically assumed it was going to rain and thought nothing of it. A gentle breeze blew by and it felt really good. It almost blew some food off the table slightly, so I reached up to grab the bag and suddenly, without warning an unbelievable gust of wind came ripping through St. Louis. All of our food blew away. So far away that we could not even find it. The umbrella's and metal poles lifted up out of the tables and signs, debre, trash, dust, dirt, and what felt like sand ripped right through us. My friend was hit in the head with one of the big metal poles flying through the air.

On a kind of weird and surreal note, we drove around through the drive thru to let the Rally's people know that our food blew away. They replaced it and we drove over to the Stadium parking lot where we sat through one of the most wicked storms I've ever been a part of. At first it was nothing but wind. The wind was blowing so hard that the car was literally almost lifting off the ground and dust filled the sky making it almost impossible to see the big tall buildings that were surrounding us. When the rain came, the wind was blowing it in such a way that it literally circled the car, blowing backwards and forwards in a spiral like motion before it hit the ground. Fences were falling into cars, windows blew out of the hotel only a block from us and I was thinking that this looked like something out of Revelation.

When the storm was over we went into the Stadium and saw the sky. It had a redish glow and looked very wicked and sinister. I captured a picture of it with my phone, but it doesn't do much justice to how freaky the sky really looked. It felt strange to stand there in that wet stadium and to look at the wicked sky while people were being hauled out of the stadium on stretchers. This is one experience that I won't soon forget.

Comments

Posted by: erin
July 22, 2006 10:31 PM

I've been reading about the St. Louis storms in the paper up here. When I read about the Cardinal game I remembered that mom and dad had tickets that night. So sorry you guys. I'm so thankful you are all okay!

Posted by: JD
July 24, 2006 04:45 PM

You forgot the part where the metal pole raised a knot the size of a golf ball on my head

Posted by: Pressed
July 24, 2006 07:08 PM

Well, you can certainly see where your mom and dad's tickets went. Maybe they were trying to drum up some business for the funeral home.