EF1 tornado, Hurricane to Mayfield, Missouri, April 28, 2021

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

April 28, 2021

Touchdown

2:50 PM CDT (19:50 UTC)

Lifted

2:58 PM CDT (19:58 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

3.4 miles (5.4 km)

Path width

225 yards (206 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Bollinger County

Touchdown point

37.436, -90.016

Lift-off point

37.464, -89.966

Record number

2104281350-01

7 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• Tractor trailer blown over - partially filled
• Hundreds of snapped and uprooted oaks and pines"
• Thousands of trees snapped and uprooted. Max width 225 yards.
• Thousands of trees snapped and uprooted with diameter up to a couple feet.

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

The remnants of a squall line moved east across southeast Missouri in the form of a loosely organized cluster of storms. These storms moved along a poorly defined warm front, characterized by weak instability and 40 to 50 kt of effective bulk wind shear. There was sufficient low level wind shear for an isolated tornado. The Paducah, KY radar wind profile indicated 0-3 km storm-relative helicity was just over 150. As the storms progressed through this environment, they produced a couple damaging gusts and a tornado.

Damage was mainly to trees, with thousands of large trees snapped or uprooted. Near the beginning of the path, along Highway M, south of Patton, a tractor trailer was overturned. A smaller trailer and several farm items were blown around, such as a fuel tank and planks. Extensive tree damage began by the time the tornado reached County Road 346, with thousands of trees downed between County Road 346 and Missouri JJ Highway. A small shed was blown away just south of JJ Highway, where the tornado reached its maximum intensity and width. A mobile home lost some of its shingles and most of its underpinning as the tornado moved along and just north of JJ Highway. The tornado ended just northeast of the intersection of JJ Highway and County Road 366, where it downed several mainly small trees and removed some shingles from a garage.

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 severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:40 UTC and running to 21:07 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:31 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.

Cape Girardeau (CGI), 45 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Paducah radar (KPAH), 116 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:48 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 2021 tornado in MissouriEvery tornado in Missouri since 1950Warnings in force in Missouri nowThe forecast where you are

10 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.