National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Overview

Showers and thunderstorms developed across northeast Missouri, west central Illinois, and extreme southeast Iowa between 4 and 11 PM, Wednesday, May 22.  Storms quickly intensified after 6 PM, with many severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings issued.  An EF-1 tornado was surveyed in Hancock county IL with these storms. 

During this event, the NWS Quad Cities Doppler Radar (KDVN) was not operational during much of the severe weather that occurred.  Technicians worked quickly to replace a motor that had seized up, even as storms approached the Quad Cities and forced them to take shelter at times.  The NWS plans and practices for these unexpected outages.  Our team of meteorologists quickly switched to viewing NWS radars in St. Louis MO and Lincoln IL. These radars give meteorologists virtually the same view as the Quad Cities radar in the area that severe weather occurred last evening, across Clark county MO, Lee county IA and Hancock county IL. Our meteorologists excel in these situations, and provided more than 20 minutes of warning lead time for the brief tornado and damaging winds that occurred in Hancock county. Radar outages are rare, and if they do occur, the NWS is ready.

 

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9:15 PM Radar Image
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