Unrated tornado, (P02)Poplar Bluff Ar, Missouri, August 31, 2024

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

August 31, 2024

Touchdown

2:44 PM CDT (19:44 UTC)

Lifted

2:45 PM CDT (19:45 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Butler County

Touchdown point

36.782, -90.349

Lift-off point

36.783, -90.351

Record number

2408311344-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU.

• Video taken from Helen Ave around 245pm shows a landspout tornado drifting towards the northwest, between Twisted Arrow and Poplar Bluff Farm Equipment. No damage was reported with this landspout.

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

Thunderstorm activity increased during the afternoon in a warm, moist, and unstable environment. MLCAPE values were around 1500 J/kg but shear was limited. Storm activity remained sub-severe, though a brief landspout tornado was captured on video on the northeast side of Poplar Bluff.

Media relayed a video taken from Helen Ave looking northeast around 1345CST of a landspout drifting northwestward between Twisted Arrow and Poplar Bluff Farm Equipment. The landspout appeared to dissipate on approach to Business U.S. 60. No damage was observed with this landspout.

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.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:29 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.

Popular Bluff (POF), 2 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Paducah radar (KPAH), 144 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:45 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2024 tornado in MissouriEvery tornado in Missouri since 1950Warnings in force in Missouri nowThe forecast where you are

1 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.