WashU’s Danforth Campus and surrounding areas were in the direct path of a tornado which touched down early in the afternoon of May 16. Radar from The Weather Channel confirmed the tornado struck the suburb of Clayton, where the Danforth Campus is located. 

In a press release to The Source, WashU said that the campus sustained moderate damage, including to roofs, concrete areas, and numerous felled trees. No injuries were reported on campus and the University asked the community to avoid the area as much as possible as they assess damage and clean up debris.  

Widespread power outages were reported in impacted areas, including on WashU’s campus, and WashU IT said that utility provider Ameren is actively working to restore power.   

Josh Warner, a recent graduate and founder of WashU Weather, said he was alerted to the exceptionally dangerous nature of this storm when it was upgraded to a rare 4-out-of-5 risk level by the National Weather Service. He also noted that the storm was unusually early in the day, as severe weather normally occurs between the hours of 4 and 8 p.m. 

“[A direct hit to WashU] is extraordinarily rare to the point where it’ll likely be a once in a generation event, given that tornadoes generally have a path that’s only at most yards wide, up to a couple 100 yards wide,” Warner said. “For a large, strong tornado to be on the ground at a specific geographical point in and around the school and surrounding neighborhoods is exceptionally rare, and something I never thought I would see.”

Student Life spoke to a few students and recent graduates who experienced the storm. Most of the damage reported to Student Life came from uprooted trees falling on buildings and vehicles in areas surrounding campus. 

Danforth Campus 

Damaged Ginkgo trees on Ginko Allée outside of Olin library, the Ginko trees in the area are almost a century old. (Photo courtesy of Wilson Hou)

Rising junior Wilson Hou was on the way to campus but turned around due to the rain. After the storm ended, he biked back over to campus and said that Alexander Calder’s Five Rudders sculpture in the East End’s Sculpture Garden appeared to have toppled. 

However, Hou was most shocked by the state of the iconic Gingko trees on campus, known for their vibrant yellow colors in the fall. 

“What really struck me was when I went to see the Ginkgo trees and they were just shredded. There’s a tree next to it that was completely uprooted as well. It was a very sobering sight.”

Sandy Wu, a second year physical therapy student at WashU’s Medical School, was at Sumers Recreation Center when the tornado warning went off. 

“They just put everybody into the basement, so I didn’t really see [the storm] but I did see one guy come in drenched, who said there were trash cans flying [outside] and smaller trees that were down,” she said. 

Wu said after the tornado passed, she was concerned about her car, which she had parked near the Domino’s on Big Bend Boulevard and Pershing Avenue. 

“I went back and checked, and it was fine, but the road was blocked because a couple trees were down, and the car behind me got struck by the tree,” Wu said. “The window was shattered, so it was a bad look.”

She said she was grateful for the people who lived around the Domino’s, because they helped her cut branches that were blocking her car.

“The neighborhood was really nice — some people were cutting the branches so I could get out,” Wu said. “It was really sweet.”

Pershing Avenue

Gus Gerlach, a recent graduate, said he was downtown when the alerts went off, and received a call from WashU alerts despite no longer being a student.

He said he raced home to assess the damage to his apartment on Pershing Avenue as soon as he saw the pictures of the damage in his neighborhood. 

“I wasn’t stressed out initially, but then once all my friends started sending me photos of the damage around their apartments, especially Pershing, then I was pretty stressed out,” he said.

While Gerlach said he currently does not have power and utilities, his property was not damaged severely.

“I’m happy my apartment isn’t damaged too much, but it’s kind of sad,” he said. “The amount of trees ripped out of the ground in Forest Park, and big trees — those are going to take forever to regrow. And then obviously, just seeing all the houses with trees on them and cars that are destroyed and stuff, it’s pretty sad, especially because I live on [Pershing] and you can just see the devastation.”

He noted that the Danforth Campus does not appear to have significant damage. 

“I was walking around WashU’s campus, and it looks mostly fine to be honest,” Gerlach said. “It’s interesting — it seems like the tornado went right through Pershing and right through Forest Park, but then WashU seems totally fine”

Waterman Boulevard

Rising senior Sophia Bukowski said that, in the morning, it seemed normal and even nice out. She said she received a weather alert from The New York Times earlier in the day, but didn’t realize how bad it would get until later when she was moving into a new apartment for the coming summer and school year.

“I was moving into [my new] room all afternoon,” Bukowski said. “I saw the sky getting darker, and it was starting to thunder a bit. It just kept progressing and progressing. And so I was like, ‘Oh shoot. I should probably bring my bike inside.’ So I got my bike and then I brought it in.”

Recent graduate Tamara Martinez, who was with Bukowski, said that the severity of the storm was unexpected to her. 

“I got really scared because the lights kept flickering off and on,” Martinez said. “We went downstairs, and when I came back up [at one point] it was still pretty bad. It was still raining and thundering.” 

She also stressed that, immediately after the storm, the weather improved rapidly, which was strange to her. 

“20 to 30 minutes later, [we] came back up and it was literally a cloudless day. It was beautiful,” Martinez said. 

Warner explained that it is common for the weather to clear up extremely quickly after the front of the tornado passes. 

Martinez said that, initially after driving to Brentwood, she thought the damage was mostly contained around Waterman Boulevard and the surrounding areas, but after driving east, she realized that it was much more widespread.

“Forest Park Parkway is devastated,” Martinez said. “There were multiple powerlines that fell down.” 

DeBaliviere Place  

The Hudson apartment building on the Northeast corner of Debalievere and Pershing sustained severe damage including to its outdoor social space pictured above. (Photo Courtesy of Keyao Song)

For rising senior Keyao Song, the tornado caused severe damage to her apartment, most notably the social space on the roof of her building. After seeing the damage, she decided that campus was the safest place to seek refuge.

“I didn’t think it was safe to go back to my apartment, and there was really nowhere to park near my street. The closest place that I could think of that might be OK is the school.”

Although she’s a St. Louis local, Song felt unprepared for the severity of the tornado.

“I don’t think anyone thought it was going to be this serious because usually the tornadoes are always out in the west and never really around the city.”

The Loop

Recent graduate Nina Bergman was at TOUS les JOURS on the loop when the storm hit. She said she was working on job applications when she received a tornado alert, along with everyone else in the cafe. After that, the power went out. 

“The sky got really dark, there was pouring rain and gusts of wind,” Bergman said. “That only lasted a couple of minutes. The power stayed off, but the intense rain and wind was really only for a few minutes.”

Bergman said that as of 8:22 p.m., the street she lives on, Kingsbury Avenue, has no power. 

She added that, when she was later on campus, fallen foliage was covering a significant portion of the area.

“I was on campus to drop off my gown, and there was an entire tree that had downed, like right in front of the bottom of Bauer Hall,” Bergman said. “There was also a gigantic branch from a tree near the chapel that had fallen … There was plant detritus everywhere. Everywhere.”

She admitted that she did not initially take the storm alert very seriously due to past alerts that never amounted to anything serious. 

“I feel like we’ve been getting tornado watches a lot and nothing has happened, so I didn’t think much of it,” Bergman said. “We’ve had a lot of boy-who-cried-wolf tornado watches.”

Warner said that he empathized with the alerts being overbearing at times, but stressed the seriousness of tornados and inclement weather events. 

“Oftentimes the alerts can seem annoying, but for the rare time that actually hits us, it’s incredibly important that people have vital information,” Warner said. “In the infrequent scenario that [a tornado] does come, it can have massive and lasting impacts.” 

Additional Reporting by Nina Laser

Josh Warner was affiliated with WashU Weather published in Student Life’s newsletter, but did not contribute to the interviewing, writing or reporting of this article.