Authorities are designating as a tornado the storm Monday night (Sept. 1) that damaged the roof of a House Springs’ business, downed trees and knocked out power for many in northwest Jefferson County.
“The National Weather Service was here today (Sept. 2) and their preliminary report indicates EF1 (Enhanced Fujita scale)-type damage,” said Warren Robinson, Jefferson County’s Emergency Management director.
An EF1 tornado registers wind speeds between 86 and 110 mph, he said.
Robinson said his office had received reports of storm damage from the area immediately north of the Hwy. 30-Hwy. MM intersection.
He said he had not heard of any injury reports from the storm.
“It’s the Byrnes Mill-House Springs area,” Robinson said. “The damage reported was largely downed trees. Some trees came down on vehicles.”
A spokesman for Hoods Discount Home Center, 4401 Hwy. 30, House Springs, said “half of the roof was torn off” in the storm, causing the business not to open as of about 1 p.m. Tuesday. He did not know when it would be ready to open.
Robinson said nearly 1,200 Ameren Missouri customers in the county had lost electricity at the peak of the outage just after midnight.
“They reported 1,185 customers in the county were without power at 12:30 a.m.,” he said,. “Most were in the Byrnes Mill-House Springs area. Right now (shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday), about 420 customers are without power in the county.”
Mike Arnhart, chief of the High Ridge Fire Protection District, said firefighters responded to about 10 calls regarding storm damage. The calls were mostly along Williams Creek and Byrnes Mill roads, he said.
“You could see the path near the elementary school (House Springs Elementary in the Northwest R-1 School District), with downed trees, and then up to Bear Creek Road,” he said.
Arnhart said two cars were crushed in the storm in Fond du Lac, a lake subdivision in Fenton. He said, however, “There were no life safety issues.”
Kelly Carter, 56, who lives on Dulin Creek Road in House Springs, said she feels relieved to only have tree damage at her home.
However, she said downed trees kept her from going to work today.
“I can’t get out of my driveway because of the trees,” Carter said. “My neighbor’s sycamore tree got knocked over and that’s in my yard. I’m very fortunate. My house did not get damaged.”
She said she remained shaky after the events of the night and from a tornado last year in her neighborhood.
“I was sleeping on my sofa while watching the TV news and the storm woke me up,” she said. “The storm came through about 10:55 p.m. We’d had a tornado come through May 31, 2013. I’d never been through a storm like that before; then we had the tornado last year and now this one. The one last night gave me the heebeegeebees.”