A line of strong and severe thunderstorms blew through southern Illinois Saturday evening, bringing strong winds, heavy rainfall and an end to the recent heat and humid conditions.
Much of the area was under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch Saturday afternoon, and Wayne and surrounding counties were under Severe Thunderstorm warnings around 6 p.m. Saturday as the line of storms approached. Some twigs and branches were down in Fairfield as a result of the storms. There were also reports of storm damage in the Wayne City and Salem areas. According to a Facebook post from Wayne-White Counties Electric Cooperative, power was knocked out from the storms in a wide part of their service area. At one point Saturday night, they reported White County had around 750 households without power, or about 22 percent of their customer base, and also reported around 1200 outages across their entire territory. Power outages were also reported in the Salem area. Wind damage was reported in the St. Louis area as storms blew through there late Saturday afternoon, with winds over 70 mph in the St. Louis area and eastern Missouri, according to the National Weather Service.
The forecast for our area is for somewhat cooler weather this week, with some daily rain and thunderstorm chances, with temperatures closer to normal for the last days of July, compared to the upper 90s and dewpoints in the mid 70s the area has had the past few days. Rain chances for this week are currently at 30 percent or less each day.
Weather also caused the cancellation of the concert at Leo French Park in Fairfield Saturday evening. According to information from Teresa Angle:
“Due to circumstances that are out of our control, the concert for tonight at Leo French Park has been cancelled. The band had some serious concerns about the excessive heat & the stage not being covered. We are sorry for the inconvenience & we were not notified until 4:30. Harris Insurance Group’s main concern is the safety of everyone involved. Thank you for your understanding & we hope to be able to do another concert at a later date.”