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EF2 tornado in New Madrid County, Missouri

Tornado March 9, 2017 · New Madrid County, Missouri

EF2
Rating
9.7 mi
Whole path
250 yd
Path width
$270K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through New Madrid County → Fulton County, Kentucky; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 250 yards (0.14 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

This EF-2 tornado first touched down near the Mississippi River levee on Highway WW, where nearly total tree devastation occurred in a 200-yard wide swath. The highly convergent tree damage consisted of hundreds of snapped and uprooted trees in the wooded river bottomlands. Peak winds were estimated near 120 mph. The tornado crossed the river into Fulton County, Kentucky shortly after forming.

The wider storm

A cluster of severe thunderstorms over south central Missouri organized into a bowing line of storms as it tracked eastward during the evening. An embedded supercell within the line spawned several tornadoes along an east-west corridor from Ripley County eastward to New Madrid County. A couple of significant tornadoes and damaging wind events accompanied this line, along with large hail. The storms developed along and just ahead of a cold front as it pressed southward into the Lower Ohio Valley and extreme southeast Missouri.

Began near Bayouville (36.6169, -89.3918).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF2 Ripley CountyEF1 Butler CountyEF1 Stoddard CountyEF1 Butler CountyEF1 Stoddard CountyEF1 New Madrid CountyEF0 Stoddard County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 683960. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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