Name: Tornado in Missouri, April 24, 2002
Start: 2002-04-24T15:45
End: 2002-04-24T16:00
Location: Missouri

Where it happened

Every event with a place to put it. Tap one for its entry below.

Tornadoes
Tropical storms and surge
Floods
Wind
Hail
Winter weather
Heat and drought
Cold
Fire, smoke and dust
Marine and coastal
Other

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The toll

Deaths: 0
Injuries: 3
Property damage: None recorded
Crop damage: None recorded
Events: 1

Deaths and injuries are direct and indirect together, as the offices filed them. Damage is property and crops in the dollars of the year, not adjusted for inflation, and only where an office estimated it.

What forecasters said that day

The local office's own words before the first event, as it sent them, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service text.

NWS St. Louis, MO wrote its last area forecast discussion before the first event at Apr 24, 2:25 PM CST, 1 hour 20 minutes earlier.

Area forecast discussion, Apr 24, 2:25 PM CST, 1 hour 20 minutes before

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION...UPDATED TO ADD TOR WATCH #147 DISC
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ST LOUIS MO
325 PM CDT WED APR 24 2002

THE SKINNY...STG CDFNT MOVG ACRS FA ATTM WITH STG-SVR TSTMS ALG/AHD
OF IT.  CDFNT WL BE THRU ERN/SRN PRTNS OF FA BFR 00Z...SO ONLY BRIEF
MENTION OF TSTMS ERL TNGT WL BE NEEDED.

OTRW...TEMPS THE ONLY FCST PROB THRU THU NGT WITH GUIDANCE HANDLING
THINGS RATHER WELL.  AIRMASS BLDG IN BHND CDFNT QUITE COOL FOR LATE
APRIL.

NXT PCPN CHC WL BE ON FRI AFTN AS WRMFNT PUSHES NEWD IN RESPONSE TO
LEE CYCLOGEN.  STG LOW-MID LVL WAA/THTA-E ADVCTN BLDS IN LATE ON
NOSE OF DIFFUSE H850 JET.  CONDS FAVORABLE FOR ELEVATED CONVECTION
EVENT BEGINNING LATE FRI AFTN CONTG INTO FRI NGT/ERL SAT MRNG.  WL
KP THUNDER GOING ON FRI AFTN DESPITE RATHER LOW SHOWALTER VALUES...
AS LOCN OF TGT SHOWALTER GRAD MORE IMPORTANT THAN ACTUAL VALUES.

MORE OF THE SAME HEADING INTO EXTDD PD WITH PCPN EVENT EVERY 2-3
DAYS AND SEASONABLE TEMPS.

***WL TRIM AWAY AT EXISTING TOR WATCH...GIVEN CURRENT POSN OF FNT.
XPCTD EXTENT OF TOR WATCH AT ZONE PRESS TIME WL BE ROUGHLY FM
LITCHFIELD-CPS-FAM.***

.STL...TOR WATCH #147 ROUGHLY ALG AND E OF A LN FM
       LITCHFIELD IL-CPS-FAM.
TES

The radar

The Paducah radar (KPAH), 141 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the first event began at 21:43 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment

Event by event

1 tornado. Local standard time, as filed.

Tornado, Madison

When: April 24, 3:45 PM CST to 4:00 PM CST
Where: Madison County, 9 mi S of Fredericktown
Rating: F2
Path length: 9 mi
Path width: 800 yd
Injuries: 3 direct, 0 indirect
Reported by: NWS STORM SURVEY
Coordinates: 37.417, -90.300

A tornado hit Madison County, first causing damage about 9 miles south of Fredericktown along Highway 67. A mobile home was destroyed and a frame house lost its roof. The tornado moved east through a heavily wooded area uprooting and damaging trees. The tornado reached Marquand, a small town of about 400 people, about 4 pm and caused considerable damage. Large trees were uprooted or snapped off and nearly every structure in a 3 to 4 block area was damaged. The Fire Station was completely destroyed as was a restaurant that was next to it. Several other frame buildings lost all or parts of their roofs. A State Emergency Management Agency damage assessment reported that 6 homes were destroyed, 12 homes suffered major damage, and 22 homes had minor damage. There were 3 minor injuries reported.

What these are

Tornado: A violently rotating column of air in contact with the ground and extending from a thunderstorm, filed with its path, width and Fujita or Enhanced Fujita rating from the damage survey.

After NWS Directive 10-1605, the rules offices file Storm Data by.

The same day elsewhere

More

Every storm in Missouri in 2002 Every state in 2002 This day in weather history The tornado archive for Missouri, 2002 Warnings in Missouri, April 2002

Sources

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, compiled from the National Weather Service’s monthly Storm Data. Complete through 2026-06; NCEI adds each month about 75 days after it ends and revises past years a few times a year. Rebuilt 2026-09-24. Each event’s entry at NCEI: 5289706.