F1 tornado, Dexter, Missouri, March 9, 2006

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

F1

Date

March 9, 2006

Touchdown

5:44 PM CST (23:44 UTC)

Path length

1.2 miles (1.9 km)

Path width

175 yards (160 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$900,000

County

Stoddard County

Touchdown point

36.800, -89.970

Lift-off point

36.820, -89.970

Record number

68

The tornado nearly paralleled U.S. Route 60 in a commercial district just north of downtown Dexter. At the beginning of the damage path, a Wal-Mart store and a car dealership were struck. The Wal-Mart sustained significant damage to its roof and auto shop bay doors. Between the Wal-Mart and the car dealership, light standards anchored by concrete three feet into the ground were pulled out. At the car dealership, about 50 cars were damaged by wind-blown debris and hail, with windows broken. At a mobile home dealership, an unsecured mobile home trailer was turned on its side and pushed next to another trailer. A church lost its steeple and 4 to 6 feet of its roof, and brick fascia was damaged. A second church near Highway 60 sustained damage to the upper portions of the front wall. A restaurant next to the church sustained structural damage when the upper portion of a wall was blown in. Two residences received moderate damage, and a heavy equipment shed was blown down. A motel reported that eight units lost parts of their roofs. Several billboards on Highway 60 were heavily damaged. A utility pole was snapped off. Peak winds were estimated near 80 MPH. Much of the damage occurred underneath the location of a funnel cloud that was photographed by a citizen. The condensation portion (or visible portion) of the funnel cloud was not touching ground in the photo. A second weaker and shorter-lived vortex touched down within a mile to the north-northwest, causing relatively slight damage to a few structures.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:20 UTC and running to 01:48 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:25 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Paducah radar (KPAH), 110 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:42 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2006 tornado in MissouriEvery tornado in Missouri since 1950Warnings in force in Missouri nowThe forecast where you are

8 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.