Tornadoes · United States · Missouri · 2011
EF1 tornado, Old Greenville to Williamsville, Missouri, April 22, 2011
From Old Greenville to Williamsville, this EF1 tornado ran 2.1 miles across Wayne County on April 22, 2011, touching down at 8:10 PM CDT and reaching 300 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $100,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
EF2111 to 135 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.
EF3136 to 165 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
EF5over 200 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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF1
- Date
- April 22, 2011
- Touchdown
- 8:10 PM CDT (01:10 UTC)
- Lifted
- 8:12 PM CDT (01:12 UTC)
- On the ground
- 2 minutes
- Path length
- 2.1 miles (3.3 km)
- Path width
- 300 yards (274 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $100,000
- County
- Wayne County
- Touchdown point
- 37.067, -90.561
- Lift-off point
- 37.039, -90.572
- Record number
- 1104221910-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Bands and clusters of strong to severe thunderstorms produced isolated reports of damaging winds, large hail, and even a tornado. A fast-moving upper level trough tracked east-northeastward from the central Plains into the upper Midwest. Strong south-southwesterly low level winds across the Mississippi Valley transported Gulf moisture rapidly northward. Thunderstorms increased along and south of a warm front draped across southern Illinois.
One mobile home was destroyed by a falling tree. Several outbuildings and a garage were destroyed. Dozens or perhaps hundreds of trees were uprooted. Two convergent path meso vortices were evident. The width of the tornado was difficult to determine due to the interaction with a downburst. There was a large swath of easterly falling trees on conservation land. Some of the pine trees within this area were snapped three feet above the ground. Highway V was blocked by trees and power lines in numerous places. Peak winds were estimated near 100 mph.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 22:51 UTC and running to 06:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22:51 UTC | 06:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | PAH |
| 00:54 UTC | 01:22 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | PAH |
| 00:57 UTC | 03:38 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | PAH |
| 01:14 UTC | 01:49 UTC | Tornado Warning | PAH |
| 02:07 UTC | 02:45 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | PAH |
| 02:29 UTC | 02:59 UTC | Tornado Warning | PAH |
| 06:11 UTC | 10:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | PAH |
| 07:02 UTC | 09:39 UTC | Flood Advisory | PAH |
| 17:56 UTC | 21:00 UTC | Flood Advisory | PAH |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Moderate Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:59 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 air that afternoon
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.
Little Rock, AR (KLZK), 00:00Z
1.2 hours before the tornado, 253 km from the path. April 23, 2011.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1313 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -176 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 2107 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1542 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 40 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 16 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 104 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 196 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.1
- Supercell composite
- 3.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.6 K/km
Little Rock, AR (KLZK), 12:00Z
10.8 hours after it, 253 km from the path. April 23, 2011.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1696 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -99 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1060 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 677 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 42 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 29 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 216 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 243 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 1.2
- Supercell composite
- 12.4
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.5 K/km
The radar
The Paducah radar (KPAH), 159 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:08 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01:25 UTC | HAIL 1.25 | Zalma | Bollinger, MO | FALLING WEST AND SOUTHWEST OF CITY LIMITS |
| 01:30 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 12 Ne Poplar Bluff | Butler, MO | IT HAS ALREADY LIFTED |
| 02:00 UTC | HAIL 1 | Grandin | Carter, MO | |
| 02:30 UTC | FLASH FLOOD | 5 Ese Winona | Shannon, MO | LOW WATER CROSSING ON HIGHWAY SOUTH W CLOSED DUE TO FLOODING. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2011 tornado in MissouriEvery tornado in Missouri since 1950Warnings in force in Missouri nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of April 22, 2011
19 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 22 | 6:03 PM CDT | EF0 | Okfuskee, OK | 0.5 | 150 | |||
| April 22 | 6:16 PM CDT | EF0 | Delaware, OK | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| April 22 | 6:41 PM CDT | EF0 | Benton, AR | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| April 22 | 7:05 PM CDT | EF0 | Benton, AR | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| April 22 | 7:17 PM CDT | EF1 | Saint Charles, MO | 7.3 | 250 | |||
| April 22 | 7:18 PM CDT | EF1 | Cherokee, OK | 1.0 | 200 | |||
| April 22 | 7:19 PM CDT | EF0 | Okmulgee, OK | 0.5 | 100 | |||
| April 22 | 7:21 PM CDT | EF0 | Benton, AR | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| April 22 | 7:45 PM CDT | EF0 | McClain, OK | 0.5 | 150 | |||
| April 22 | 7:59 PM CDT | EF1 | McClain, OK to MO, IL | 0.2 | 30 | $5,000 | ||
| April 22 | 7:59 PM CDT | EF4 | St. Louis tornado, MO | 21.3 | 880 | 5 | $250 million | |
| April 22 | 8:02 PM CDT | EF0 | Garvin, OK | 0.4 | 50 | |||
| April 22 | 8:14 PM CDT | EF0 | McIntosh, OK | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| April 22 | 8:50 PM CDT | EF2 | Monroe, IL | 3.5 | 90 | 1 | ||
| April 22 | 8:55 PM CDT | EF2 | Madison, IL | 18.2 | 700 | |||
| April 22 | 9:02 PM CDT | EF1 | Saint Clair, IL | 1.8 | 80 | |||
| April 22 | 10:50 PM CDT | EF2 | Union, KY | 15.5 | 300 | 2 | $880,000 | |
| April 22 | 11:27 PM CDT | EF0 | Daviess, KY | 0.2 | 40 | $3,000 | ||
| April 22 | 1:35 AM EDT | EF0 | Jackson, IN | 3.8 | 50 | $30,000 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.