'We're in a tornado:' Watch St. Louis construction workers ride out deadly twister
'Within minutes, a massive weather system had hit the ground and was decimating our neighborhoods,' St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said about the tornado at a May 19 press conference.
A pair of construction workers in St. Louis had no choice but to keep calm and carry on when a tornado blew through their worksite.
Alexander Hoffman, one of the construction workers, captured the moment he and a coworker got caught up in a deadly tornado that ripped through the city.
Both men took shelter in a construction vehicle, marveling at how the fast-moving winds tore up the area they were working on and the equipment they were using in a matter of seconds.
"Oh my god. We're in a tornado," one person could be heard saying in the video. "We're literally in a (expletive) tornado, dude."
At least half a dozen tornadoes touched down in Missouri, including in St. Louis, and neighboring Illinois on May 16.
Watch: Construction workers ride out violent tornado
Seven people, five in St. Louis and two in Scott County, were killed after two tornadoes struck those areas. As many as 5,000 structures were damaged, and thousands of residents went without power through May 18.
St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer, who estimated that the damages to the city could exceed $1 billion, said search and rescue efforts were complete May 18. Spencer acknowledged, a day later, that city officials failed to deploy warning sirens to the community fast enough.
"Within minutes, a massive weather system had hit the ground and was decimating our neighborhoods," Spencer said at a May 19 press conference. "In those minutes, between the warning and the time that we were experiencing a massive weather event, there was a failure, a human failure, a failure in protocol to get the sirens up and running to let the community know that there was a massive weather event hitting our community."
The National Weather Service (NWS) reported that there was a chance "scattered severe thunderstorms" may develop across east central and southeast Missouri, into southwest and south central Illinois this afternoon ahead of a cold front.
Residents in those areas should exercise caution as hail and damaging wind gusts are the "primary threats."
"A tornado or two is also possible, but not as likely as the past few days. The threat for storms will end from west to east through late afternoon into early evening as the cold front passes," according to a May 20 Facebook post by NWS.
St. Louis, other regions grapple with severe weather
Though Missouri has been hit especially hard by the recent bout of severe weather, other regions, specifically in the Midwest and East, were in a very similar situation. Several tornadoes were spotted in Kentucky, Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma and Nebraska in the last few days.
At least 28 people have died and dozens more were injured in the wave of tornadoes and storms that roared through those regions from late May 15 through May 18. Videos and photos from the affected regions show demolished structures, damaged vehicles, toppled trees and fallen power lines.
More than 80 tornadoes had been confirmed as of Monday morning, with areas of Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois and Virginia − where two deaths were reported − staggered by some of the worst damage, AccuWeather said.
Another round of dangerous storms was forecast to roll through states across the Mississippi Valley on May 20, impacting regions deep in cleanup mode. The storm system is expected to bring scattered showers and thunderstorms.
Parts of seven states in the central U.S., from Nebraska and south to Texas (and Oklahoma), were under a tornado watch while severe thunderstorms are expected across the Deep South and the Tennessee Valley on May 20 until midway through the week.
The risk of severe thunderstorms is expected to shift into the Ohio Valley and East Coast by May 21.
Contributing: Jeanine Santucci, John Bacon and Doyle Rice, Paste BN