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EF1 tornado in Ripley County, Missouri

Tornado March 30, 2025 · Ripley County, Missouri

EF1

Rating

8.6 mi

Whole path

50 yd

Path width

$55K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Ripley County → Butler County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 50 yards (0.03 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

An EF-1 tornado began about two miles east northeast of Oxly. It moved eastward mainly damaging trees. It ripped the roof off of an outbuilding on Highway B just before moving into Butler County just north of the Little Black River. The estimated peak wind was 90 mph. The tornado continued to produce EF-0 damage in Butler county and had a total path length around 8.5 miles.

The wider storm

In the base of an approaching upper-level trough, strong mid and upper-level jets overspread the middle Mississippi Valley on the afternoon of the 30th. Steep mid-level lapse rates contributed to rapid destabilization, as well, setting the stage for a widespread severe thunderstorm event. As the cold front approached, thunderstorms rapidly intensified and quickly formed into line segments upon reaching southeast Missouri in the mid-afternoon. Large hail was common with many locations reporting quarter size up to golf ball size hail. However, one storm produced an EF-1 tornado over southeast Ripley that moved east into southwest Butler County. It mainly damaged trees and a few outbuildings along its path. This same storm went on to produce baseball size hail in Qulin. The Cape Girardeau Regional Airport (KCGI) measured a 58 mph gust with another storm that went on to produce an EF-1 tornado just across the Mississippi River in Alexander County Illinois.

Began near Oxly (36.6100, -90.6492).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1247503. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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