Hurricanes

It has only happened once and will hopefully never happen again. There was a wind event in Missouri that is so legendary that the speed of the winds were double that of even a category 5 hurricane.

This weekend a historic tropical storm is impacting California. Has one of these systems ever maintained enough strength to slam Missouri? The answer is surprisingly yes. As a matter of fact, it's happened on six different occasions.

As storms moved through Missouri this weekend, the St. Louis airport has officially confirmed that hurricane-force winds were recorded there.

It was quite a wind event in Missouri, Illinois and Iowa today as winds equaling a category 1 hurricane were reported in many locations.

As the recent storm has reminded us, hurricanes are an annual concern for coastal states along the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern seaboard. But, did you know that even Missouri has been affected by more than 44 hurricanes over the past century and a half?

The fact that the Mississippi River ran backwards after the massive New Madrid earthquake of 1811 is now the stuff of legend, but did you know that it's run backwards at least twice since? It's strange, but true and had nothing to do with earthquakes either.

It's no secret that we had an extreme weather event this week. How windy was it? Answer: very. Over 50 Midwest locations had hurricane-force winds during Wednesday's storms.

With weather patterns changing, more and more violent weather has been damaging different parts of the United States, so could hurricanes in Illinois becomes a possibility?