MOSCOW MILLS, Mo. — Walt Humburg, along with his wife and his dogs, woke up Wednesday morning as the only people in Lincoln County with extensive damage to their home.
"The winds were just howling really bad," Humburg told 5 On Your Side late Tuesday night, "Then about 10, 15 minutes later it got real loud, my ears popped and the roof folded in on itself."
It was windy, but not storming and not raining. Remember the ear-popping part? We will get back to that.
After taking cover in the bathroom, Humburg walked into his hallway.
"I looked in my kitchen and noticed I could see stars," he said.
His house is the only structure in Moscow Mills that got hit, and it was one of the first reports to come in.
"That just kind of started everything," Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Adam Stanek told 5 On Your Side.
Stanek had settled in at home for the night, thinking severe weather wasn't coming in until early in the morning. When the damage reports started coming in, he got up and headed to work.
Driving into his Troy office, he passed through a small town on 47.
"I saw the big shed down there in the Hawk Point area," he said.
Stanek and his Assistant Director Quentin Laws started relaying reports to the St. Louis National Weather Service. The barn in Hawks Point and Humburg's house in Moscow Mills were the large reports, but there were also trees and power lines down throughout the county. Numerous people were without power.
When the damage reports first came in, meteorologists in St. Louis were skeptical.
"So our first thoughts are, 'We have to verify it,'" said Kevin Deitsch, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for National Weather Service of St. Louis tells 5 On Your Side.
It checked out and then they started working on the cause. A Senior Meteorologist in the office called it first. At 8:55 p.m., National Weather Service Meteorologist Fred Glass wrote to broadcast meteorologists and emergency officials, "could be a gravity wave tracking on the backside of these showers."
After further evaluation, determining it was definitely not thunderstorm-related, Deitsch told 5 On Your Side, "We think what we had was what's called a gravity wave."
Here's how it happened, we didn't have many storms Tuesday evening because there was a layer of warm air high in the atmosphere, a cap.
"Sometimes we get storms that try to develop," Dietsch said. "They kind of run into that cap and the reason they don't really succeed is they get pushed downwards."
It happened fast and forced strong winds down to the surface. Those winds barreled right toward Humburg's house and the barn in Hawk Point, at least that's the current thought behind the National Weather Service analysis.
"I can't say 100% for sure that's what it was. We are still evolving the science on gravity waves."
Tuesday's gravity wave was a first for Dietsch to see in the St. Louis area. Weather First Chief Meteorologist Scott Connell has worked at 5 On Your Side for 32 years and he does not recall any situations like this.