LIGHTNING DESTROYS SHED NEAR CAPE GIRARDEAU

Robert Fornkahl heard the lightning crash near his rural Cape Girardeau home. Then he saw the flames erupting from his combination garage and shed.

But the elderly Fornkahl could do little but watch the metal-roofed building burn.

Fornkahl and his wife were home when lightning struck Sunday afternoon.

"We heard it strike. It shook the house," he said as he watched volunteer firefighters with the East County Fire Department extinguish the blaze.

Fornkahl lives at 1791 County Road 651 north of Cape Girardeau. The garage and shed sits only a few yards from his home.

His son, Ron Fornkahl, who lives nearby, said the building was struck around 1:30 p.m.

The fire destroyed Ron Fornkahl's antique car, a 1960 Corvair Lakewood station wagon. It also destroyed the elder Fornkahl's car and a lawn tractor. No one was injured.

The winter storm, accompanied by heavy rain and lightning, moved through the Cape Girardeau area Sunday morning and early afternoon.

Lightning struck the Amoco station at 2148 William at 10:22 a.m., but a fire department spokesman said the building wasn't damaged.

AmerenUE officials reported only a few isolated and brief outages.

The fast-moving storm dumped several inches of rain on the region. The National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., said most areas of Southeast Missouri received between half an inch and an inch of rain. Isolated spots got as much as 2 1/2 inches.

"We got some hail in Stoddard County and that was just dime size," said Weather Service meteorologist Pat Spoden. "It wasn't major league."

The area needed the rain. "It is still pretty dry out there," he said.

The storm, fueled by an unstable and warm air mass, blew through the region. In Poplar Bluff, the high temperature reached 64 degrees. In Cape Girardeau, it topped out at 50.

"The warm front was just south of Cape Girardeau," Spoden said.

The storm system that moved through the area also spawned a tornado around Nashville, Tenn.

"The severe weather just missed us," Spoden said. "We got the rain, which we were fortunate to get, but we missed out on the severe weather. Most people are happy about that."