BONNE TERRE, Mo. — High winds and heavy rain caused damage to homes and property in the Missouri town of Bonne Terre late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.
High winds brought down a huge tree, narrowly missing Jerrod Ragsdale’s family’s two-story house at the intersection of Southwest Main and Cross.
“I tried looking out the window and I couldn't see anything,” said Ragsdale. “It was so windy. When I looked out my kitchen window, I could see the fallen tree. It was maybe a foot from the window. And where it came down, actually my two children's rooms are up there. They were in their rooms when the storm started, but came into our room, screaming and crying.”
In the backyard, the tree’s upended root ball stretched easily 20 feet in diameter. 5 On Your Side has observed that this has happened multiple times, this storm season — where high winds don’t snap a tree trunk. Instead, high winds simply uproot the tree and push it right over.
Streets in the St. Francois County neighborhoods along Highway 47 west of town were littered with small tree limbs and branches. Heavy rain caused water levels in a drainage culvert that goes beneath Highway 47 to raise by several feet.
Some of the hardest rain that fell overnight was just south of Bonne Terre. Farmington got about three inches of rain and Know Lick got more than five inches.
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