By Annabeth Miller, ShowMe Times Editor

Bootheel residents held on tight and road out the storms as tough weather systems made their way across the state.

Most of the damage from the storms was in the northern end of Stoddard County, according the Sheriff Carl Hefner. Hefner said Wednesday morning that there were about three major areas of storm damage and no reported injuries.

“We had a report of a twister south of Puxico but there was no damage reported,” Hefner said.

The Advance area seemed to take hard hits from the storm with tree damage at both the Post Office and elementary school. Hefner said a tree was downed during the storm and damaged a portion of the Advance Post Office. In addition, the sheriff reported a large tree came down on top of an elementary building in Advance.

An unconfirmed twister blew through Parma at about 9:55 p.m. Parma Chief of Police Trish Cullen reported that a funnel cloud was spotted on the south end of the community.

“Tree are down and power lines down,” Cullen said Wednesday morning. “Part of the roof at the Community Center and City Hall was damaged.

“The police officer on duty got volunteers to come in last night and remove and save all the old high school pictures in the community hall,” saving that piece of community heritage, she said.

At the peak of Tuesday night’s storms, Ameren Missouri reports 637 customers were without power. A spokesman for Ameren said the outages were due mostly to two large feeder lines downed by the wind.

“Wind and lightening caused the most problems,” said Mike Cleary of Ameren Missouri’s office in St. Louis. “The peak of outages in Dexter was at 9:30 Tuesday night.”

Cleary said that during the peak of the storm in Southeast Missouri there were approximately 3,800 customers without service. System-wide in Missouri 10,000 customers lost power, primarily in the St. Louis area.

“There was a lot of wind and lightening with these storms,” Cleary said. By 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, less than 700 Ameren customers in the state without power.

Hefner also reported that a building on County Road 690 south of Bernie blew across the road and struck some vehicles. New Clines Island north of Highway 25 in the eastern part of the county a car ran off the road and struck a tree.

In Dexter, there were no reports of major damage in the city and the emergency sirens were not sounded. While the weather system looked ominous on the radar, Dexter escaped much of the storm’s damage.

Other damage in the region reported to the National Weather Service includes:

• Chaffee reported .88 inch hail and wind damage with large trees down on a home in the community.
• Strong gusts of wind was reported along the Mississippi River in both Mississippi and New Madrid counties. The wind was reportedly so strong it moved a vehicle. In addition, dime-size hail was reported in East Prairie.
• Winds estimated between 70 – 75 mph were reported at Marble Hill. Widspread damage was by emergency management staff west and north of the city and most of the damage appear to have been caused by straight line winds with some homes having lost roofs.


Photo Above: A large tree fell Tuesday night at Advance Elementary School during the storms that passed through the region. School officials luckily report minimal damage to the building as a result of the tree slamming into the building; classes went on as scheduled Wednesday morning at Advance. (SMT photo by Andrew Cato)