Unrated tornado, Dudenville, Missouri, May 20, 2019

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 20, 2019

Touchdown

6:45 PM CDT (23:45 UTC)

Lifted

6:46 PM CDT (23:46 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Jasper County

Touchdown point

37.294, -94.102

Lift-off point

37.297, -94.098

Record number

1905201745-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SGF, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 60 mph.

• Brief touchdown in open field

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

Multiple rounds of storms producing heavy rainfall, severe winds, hail and tornadoes moved across the Missouri Ozarks from May 20th and into the early morning hours of May 24th as upper level disturbances interacted with a slow moving but powerful storm system over the central Plains. Tornadoes occurred with each round, with the strongest and most numerous tornadoes occurring during the late afternoon and evening of the 22nd. On the anniversary of the Joplin Tornado off 2011, another tornado, rated EF-3 struck the north side of Joplin. This storm system eventually produced subsequent tornadoes in Golden City, Eldon and Jefferson City. Unfortunately there were three fatalities as a result of the tornado in Golden City. The cumulative rainfall caused areas of flash flooding with some flooding lingering across the region. Some locations in southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri reported in excess of 8 inches of rainfall over the 72 hour period. .

A video confirmed the touch down of a tornado in an open field south of Highway 37 and Baseline Road. The time and location was estimated as no damage was detected.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 22:14 UTC and running to 03:46 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 20:02 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 Springfield radar (KSGF), 62 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:44 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 2019 tornado in MissouriEvery tornado in Missouri since 1950Warnings in force in Missouri nowThe forecast where you are

38 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.