EF0 tornado, Lexington Arpt, Missouri, May 10, 2014

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. 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.

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

EF0

Date

May 10, 2014

Touchdown

6:00 PM CDT (23:00 UTC)

Lifted

6:02 PM CDT (23:02 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (1.0 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Ray County

Touchdown point

39.212, -93.869

Lift-off point

39.212, -93.860

Record number

1405101700-01

19 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS EAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 122 mph.

• School roof gone, but the walls are in tact.
• lose of trusses windows, doors.
• Stick built pole barn damaged.
• garage doors and side walls blown out. roof damage.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

During the day on Saturday, May 10 several supercell thunderstorms formed across western and northern Missouri. The first cells formed around 3 pm in far northern Missouri, and produced very large hail up to the size of softballs! These softball sized hail stones fell near the city of Trenton, Missouri in Grundy County. Later in the evening another cluster of storms formed directly over the Kansas City metro area, and after several minutes of maturing, a dominant supercell moved east of the metro and produced a strong tornado west of Orrick, Missouri. Unfortunately the tornado moved into the town of Orrick and damaged many structures; however, no injuries were reported with this tornado. The storm then went on to produce another tornado near the city of Marshall, Missouri in Saline County. Also remarkable with this supercell was that a storm chaser near the tornado reported winds in excess of 100 mph near Marshall. By the late evening hours most of the storm activity either dissipated or moved out of the area.

Tornado 2 for the day formed just north of the town of Lexington, Missouri and did damage to trees along the northern bank of the Missouri River, just north of Lexington. No structures were damaged in this short and weak tornado.

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

18 minutes of warning. NWS EAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:42 UTC, 18 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 19:31 UTC and running to 02:29 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 19:51 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 Pleasant Hill radar (KEAX), 56 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:01 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 2014 tornado in MissouriEvery tornado in Missouri since 1950Warnings in force in Missouri nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.