EF0 tornado, Cave Spg to Olive, Missouri, May 6, 2024

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 6, 2024

Touchdown

12:33 AM CDT (05:33 UTC)

Lifted

12:55 AM CDT (05:55 UTC)

On the ground

22 minutes

Path length

18.7 miles (30.1 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$73,000

Counties

Greene, Polk and Dallas counties

Touchdown point

37.322, -93.465

Lift-off point

37.452, -93.166

Record number

2405062333-01

7 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 76 mph.

• Tree uprooted facing the north and tin blown onto powerlines
• Small garage damaged. Garage door blown in and parts of the roof blown off.
• Trees uprooted and other limbs lying laying NW, E, S.
• Trees blown to the south and northeast.

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

A shortwave trough and an associated cold front pushed through the Missouri Ozarks during the late evening of May 6, 2024 and into the early morning hours of May 7, 2024. Thunderstorms developed along the front west of the Ozarks, quickly growing upscale to a linear storm mode by the time they reached southwest Missouri. This line of thunderstorms pushed through the area, causing widespread wind damage, flash flooding, and several tornadoes.

A NWS storm survey team determined that an EF-0 tornado with maximum wind speeds of 80 mph touched down in Greene County and continued tracking northeast. The tornado both uprooted trees and downed large limbs out of numerous other trees, and damaged or destroyed several outbuildings along an intermittent path extending from Greene Hills Country Club northwest of Willard across northern Greene County before reaching the Greene/Polk County line. Two homes were damaged by falling trees, with one injury reported in one of these homes. The tornado continued to track into Polk and Dallas counties.

This is a continuation of an EF-0 tornado that touched down in Greene County. Once the tornado crossed into Polk County, it continued it's intermittent path northeast, intermittently uprooting trees and causing limb damage for 3.7 miles before crossing into Dallas County.

This is a continuation of an EF-0 tornado that touched down in Greene County and intermittently tracked northeast into Polk and Dallas counties. Once the tornado crossed into Dallas County, it continued for 0.97 miles, uprooting trees and snapping large limbs, before dissipating.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS SGF issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:32 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 06:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 01:41 UTC and running to 07:03 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:50 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), 18 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:36 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 2024 tornado in MissouriEvery tornado in Missouri since 1950Warnings in force in Missouri nowThe forecast where you are

40 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.