ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – A video is making rounds across social media platforms of an airplane taking off during Friday night’s severe weather in St. Louis—and more shockingly, what looks to be a tornado in the background.
The video posted by Mason Pepper on X, formerly known as Twitter, shows a plane at the St. Louis Lambert International Airport taking off.
Between the bouts of lightning in the sky, one particular flash clearly shows a cloud that looks eerily similar to a tornado.
With research on FlighRadar24, Pepper believes the plane was with Southwest Airlines, which shows the plane lifting off at 9:18 p.m.
A look back on FOX 2’s coverage of the storms, the time frame matches when chief meteorologist Glenn Zimmerman was sending warnings to the Maryland Heights area of large-scale rotation showing on doppler radar at 9:20 p.m., which is directly south of the airport.
FOX 2 reached out to Lambert Airport, and they referred us to the FAA, noting they do not have any control in the air traffic control tower. The airport emergency plan for the airport, however, states that if a tornado is reported and sighted within a 6-mile radius, a message will be activated for all personnel and passengers to seek immediate shelter.
Meteorologist and extreme weather specialist Chris Higgins, who has also served within the United States Air Force and Missouri Air National Guard, he also saw the video and provided the following comment:
“The pilots are in a tough spot. They probably cannot see the tornado, but they surely know there is a tornado warning for the airport from their briefings, communication with their dispatch and information from the tower. They have to make a tough call: stay on the runway with a plane full of passengers, basically as sitting ducks, or takeoff ahead of the tornado. There is no time to taxi back to the gate and unload passengers. Having talked to other pilot friends of mine, I’d say taking off may have been the best option of the bad options available.”
While he couldn’t confirm this was the same tornado that touched down nearby, Higgins added that the appearance of the cloud in the video does match the silhouette he had seen in Chesterfield shortly before then.
The FAA has not responded immediately for comment.
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