ST. LOUIS — A strong line of storms caused widespread damage and knocked out power to thousands of people in the St. Louis area.
According to the Ameren outage map, about 23,000 customers in the greater St. Louis area were without service as of 8:30 a.m. Sunday, down from almost double that number immediately after the storms moved through Saturday.
Two lines of storms blew into the St. Louis area late Friday night and into Saturday morning.
The first brought up to tennis ball-sized hail in west St. Louis County and heavy downpours in other parts of the region before 10 p.m. but did not contain as strong of winds.
The second line arrived in St. Louis at around 1 a.m. The second line of storms had winds up to 60 mph as it came through the St. Louis area.
Viewer photos showed large trees in Kirkwood, Oakland and other portions of St. Louis County.
Viewer photos: St. Louis area storm damage
The storm also caused damage in downtown St. Louis. Trees were down in the area of the Citygarden Sculpture Park.
A church spire fell onto the street below in St. Louis' Downtown West neighborhood during severe overnight storms.
Firefighters were called to Centenary United Methodist Church near the intersection of Pine and N 17th Streets at around 2 a.m. While the region was under a severe thunderstorm warning, the roof of the spire was thrown onto Pine Street.
Firefighters said none of the cars parked on the street or the parking lot were hit by debris.
According to tweets from the department, firefighters on the scene used thermal imaging cameras and a drone to ensure there was no fire or additional structural damage that posed an additional threat.