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EF1 tornado in Bollinger County, Missouri

Tornado February 29, 2012 · Bollinger County, Missouri

EF1
Rating
31.9 mi
Whole path
800 yd
Path width
1
Injury
$100K
Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 800 yards (0.45 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

Six to eight homes sustained roof damage along Highway 72. The roof damage consisted mainly of shingle damage. Ten larger barns received roof damage over a five-mile area. Numerous trees were uprooted and snapped. Numerous power poles were down. The average path width was 800 yards. Peak winds were estimated near 90 mph.

The wider storm

A squall line with embedded sustained supercells crossed southeast Missouri. The embedded supercells raced east-northeast at 60 to 70 mph, while the line moved southeast at a slower rate. The storms strengthened as they encountered richer low-level moisture, with surface dew points around 60 degrees spreading rapidly north-northeastward up the Mississippi Valley. Intense low to mid-level wind fields maintained the intensity of tornadic storms despite weak instability due to lack of solar heating. A south-southwesterly low level jet from 60 to 70 knots veered to west-southwest around 75 knots at 500 mb.

Began near Grisham (37.4520, -90.1188).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

4 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 359707. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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