confirmed tornadoes. St. Louis area The derecho moved across the St. Louis area at about 18:45 CDT (00:45 UTC) that evening. The storms produced destructive straight-line winds across the metropolitan area, along with two isolated F0 tornadoes. These storms downed many trees atop active power lines, creating the largest electricity outage in the history of the City of St. Louis. More than 1,200,000 residents of the area were left without power amidst a heat wave during an already hot and humid midwestern United States summer. The outage was described by Ameren as the worst in the utility's history. The highest winds officially recorded were in Macoupin County, Illinois, in the northern part of the metropolitan area, where 160 km/h (100 mph) winds were recorded. Most of the region saw hurricane-force wind gusts near 130 km/h (80 mph). At first, there was little warning that such a storm was going to hit. The moderate risk area was well to the north, and no severe weather was forecast in the area. The derecho surprised a sellout crowd of almost 44,000 St. Louis Cardinals fans, packed into the new Busch Stadium, to see the Cardinals versus the Atlanta Braves. Winds of about 130 km/h (80 mph) whirled around the St. Louis area, sending the fans running for shelter. The winds knocked out power and broke windows out of the press box. Nearly two minutes after the winds began at 100 mph, they stopped, and it began to rain. In all, about 30 people were injured at the stadium. The storms went on to hit other cities in Illinois, including Alton, O'Fallon, Edwardsville, Bethalto, Glen Carbon and East St. Louis. The neighbouring towns of East Alton, Wood River, and Roxana house the third largest oil refinery in the United States. When the storms hit, they uprooted nearly 30% of all trees in the area, knocked out power for nearly a week, and left the refineries powerless. Aftermath The next day many St. Louisians dealt with a temperature of 97 degrees with a heat index of more than 100. Many people seeking generators or ice after the storms were faced with long queues at local grocery, hardware stores and gas stations. Many point-of-sale readers and automated banking machines were malfunctioning. Cash was the only usable tender at many locations. Gas shortages also became an issue as well as some food shortages. After a few days,