Training storms and how they can become dangerous

In 2023, there were 79 total direct deaths in the United States due to flooding. Flooding is one of the more dangerous weather related natural disasters and occurs often in Mid-Missouri.

Just last night, an atmospheric phenomena known as training storms occurred. Training storms happens whenever there are multiple showers or storms going over the same area for a long persistent period of time. The training storms last night resulted in a flash warning being issued by the St. Louis National Weather Service for portions of Osage, Montgomery, and Callaway counties.

Training occurs whenever a cluster of storms assembles and begin to grow. They star out in their cumulus stage before an updraft forms causing the growth of these storms as they move in a given direction. Eventually they will become their eldest stage known as mature storms. This stage usually sees the most damaging portions of a storms and can lead to high rainfall rates. Although the original cell will continue to move in its set direction, the cells upstream will continue to follow the same life cycle as this previous cell resulting in more rainfall over the same area for long periods of time.

Training last night lead to almost 4" of rainfall for the four corner region mentioned bordering Montgomery and Osage counties. just to the east of Mid-Missouri, training also lead to even higher totals resulting in a water rescue performed by EMS.