EF2 tornado in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri

Tornado February 29, 2012 · Cape Girardeau County, Missouri

EF2

Rating

31.9 mi

Whole path

300 yd

Path width

Injury

$350K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Cape Girardeau County → Union County, Illinois → Jackson County, Illinois; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 300 yards (0.17 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 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

Thousands of trees were snapped or uprooted, and several houses were damaged. The houses that were damaged suffered primarily partial roof loss. The houses were located in Oak Ridge and Pocahontas. One man was injured when a roof collapsed on him. Numerous barns and grain bins were destroyed. Many power lines were blown down. The average path width was 250 yards. Peak winds were estimated near 115 mph. The tornado path continued across the Mississippi River into Union County, Illinois.

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 Oak Ridge (37.5000, -89.7300).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF3 Stoddard County 1 dead EF2 Bollinger County EF2 Bollinger County EF1 Stoddard County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 359708. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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