Despite living in Missouri for over 3 years in the mid 1990s, and chasing there many times since, this was my first tornado in the state, in a part I hadn’t visited before. This view samples the first minute or two of the first of several tornadoes produced by the parent supercell. Tightly rotating dust rose quickly to the broad condensation funnel aloft, confirming unambiguously what this was. Nontornadic dust, blown by the rear-flank downdraft, can be seen at lower left. The thunderstorm had formed deep in the Ozarks of south-central Missouri over an hour before. We maneuvered into the projected path a bit too well while waiting for its exit from the nearly hopeless (for effective spotting) hills and forests to the west. The storm waited until entering the northern tip of the Mississippi Valley’s “Delta” flatlands (with better visibility and 70s F surface dewpoints) to spin up this tornado behind us, as we drove east, and then turned south. It was the first lifetime tornado for most of the students I was helping to lead in an Ohio State storm-observing class. Here the growing vortex was less than a mile to our west-northwest, moving east at over 50 mph, and audible. We therefore scooted south right after this shot, and safely let it cross the road behind us. Sadly, this EF3-rated tornado would go on to kill two mobile-home residents near I-55 along a roughly 13-mile path. The parent supercell lasted another 8-1/2 hours after this, all the way along the length of southern Kentucky, before being absorbed by a squall line near the Virginia border! Along the way, and 5-1/2 hours after this, the supercell spawned the large, violent tornado that killed 19 people in and near London, KY.
3 WSW Crowder MO (16 May 25) Looking WNW
36.9512, -89.7435