I'm sorry, weretable. I hope you can get in touch with everyone you're trying to reach soon. Hang in there.

More info coming in, sounds like the damage path was south of someone I was most concerned about. I would not be surprised to hear about numerous fatalities in the morning in some area communities from the damage reports coming in, but there was a lot of warning so you never know.

I took 200+ pictures tonight, some wonderful pictures of the supercell structure but I was shooting some video and the batteries died - was not paying attention to the indicator. Apparently it did something to the images as I could view them on my camera with fresh batteries, but I was unable to view them on the computer. It would not even transfer the video file. Lesson for the future. Watch the battery light.

Still lots of supercells going in Missouri, there have been over 40 tornadoes in the state today. Horrible outbreak. When all is said and done, I would not be surprised if this isn't one of the worst outbreaks (in terms of number of tornadoes) ever. Possibly damage/fatalities as well, as it sounds like Springfield, Illinois got hit really, really hard today.

It's good to know that you're ok. I'll be thinking of you and everyone else in your area. Please give us an update tomorrow.

isn't it early for tornadoes?

It is perhaps a bit early in the sense that April and May are the worst months, but there have been bad tornado outbreaks in January. Spring is a bit early this year and with spring comes thunderstorms.

Yikes!

We had a tornado watch in the Chicago area but nothing touched down here. We did have some heavy thunderstorms, though.

Springfield did get hit hard. Here's an article and photo gallery from the State Journal-Register about it, and here's the story from the Chicago Tribune.

yow. weretable, stay safe. Mother Nature sure is pissed these days.

Officially it has not been rated yet (that will probably be announced tonight or tomorrow) but it is looking like the tornado here might be an F3. Pretty widespread damage, no fatalities thankfully but Benton county will certainly be declared a disaster area. Lot of people lost their homes in several communities, baseball to softball sized hail caused extensive damage to roofs, windows, autos, etc. At this time it is believed that the tornado had approximately a 97 mile path, which is a fairly long-lived twister. It might turn out that it was multiple tornadoes from the same storm, it is still early.

I got some pictures of golfball sized hail...me and some friends made hail cocktails and saved a few pitchers for later. From my porch in downtown Columbia, it sounded like a giant freight train going through just north of town...an elementary school near me had about 50 windows blown out by hail...me and mine are ok though!