EF2 tornado in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri

Tornado February 29, 2012 · Cape Girardeau County, Missouri

EF2

Rating

7.7 mi

Whole path

120 yd

Path width

$170K

Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 120 yards (0.07 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

The tornado crossed into Cape Girardeau County from Bollinger County just north of where Missouri Highway 72 crosses the county line. Many large trees were snapped or uprooted with indications of a multi-vortex damage pattern. Three homes had most of their windows blown out with one having part of it's roof blown off. An attached garage was uplifted and tossed over 100 yards. The roofs on 2 mobile homes were partially ripped off. The average path width was 100 yards. The peak wind speed was 115 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 Kurreville (37.4707, -89.8623).

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 Cape Girardeau County EF1 Stoddard County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 368238. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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