Hail — Mississippi, Missouri

2024-05-08 · near East Prairie, Mississippi, Missouri

Event narrative

Hail estimated to quarter size fell in East Prairie as a supercell moved eastward through Mississippi County.

Wider weather episode

A major outbreak of severe weather occurred on the 8th for the Quad State region. On the synoptic scale, a longwave trough was centered across the Rockies with deep-layer southwesterly flow from the Southern Plains to the Ohio Valley. A 110 kt upper jet extended from northern KS to IA while a 60 kt mid-level jet was positioned across northern MZ into IA. Surface low pressure near the MZ/KS border lifted to St. Louis around 12am CST on the 9th. A warm frontal boundary stretched across the Quad State, with a cold front extending southward from the surface low.

The environment became unstable by early afternoon, especially in SE Missouri, with MLCAPE of 3000 J/kg. Deep-layer shear was on the order of 55-65 kts, though low-level shear was 15 kts, increasing to 20 kts later in the day. SRH was around 100-150 m2/s2 with higher values north towards St. Louis. STP values were 2-3 due to deep-layer shear and instability. Supercell activity was more prominent during the afternoon to the east in Southern Illinois or Western Kentucky compared to Southeast Missouri.

For Southeast Missouri, storms moved through with the cold front late evening on the 7th through the overnight hours with marginally severe wind gusts in Advance. The front reversed course and began lifting as a warm front in the morning. Though convective organization was mainly in Western Kentucky at first, late morning storms near the Missouri/Illinois border produced a brief EF-0 tornado northeast of Cape Girardeau. The mid-afternoon and late afternoon lines of storms had a glancing impact on northern portions of Southeast Missouri, with the late evening storm line finally pushing across, producing widespread wind damage in Ripley County and hail further east.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.7836, -89.3959)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1181940. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.