Two tornadoes confirmed in Mid-Missouri on Easter Sunday
The National Weather Service in St. Louis has completed storm surveys in the eastern part of the area and confirmed two tornadoes touched down in Mid-Missouri on Easter Sunday. A tornado that tracked through north Columbia stayed on the ground longer, but a twister that spun up north of New Bloomfield was stronger.
The New Bloomfield tornado was rated an EF-2 with peak winds up to 120 miles per hour. It touched down northwest of New Bloomfield and tracked north as it passed Guthrie between 1:31 to 1:36 p.m. Sunday and caused damage to several homes and trees.
Columbia experienced its first EF-1 tornado of the century as a twister touched down in the northern part of the city on Easter. The tornado first developed near Highway 763 and tracked northeast for over 6 miles before lifting near North Rogers Road.
While it produced lower winds than the New Bloomfield tornado, the peak winds were up to 110 miles per hour from the twister in north Columbia, which devastated the city's recycling center.
The last EF-1 tornado or greater to strike Columbia was over 25 years ago, when a multi-vortex EF-3 tornado touched down in the southeast side of town on November 10th, 1998. Incredibly, even though the tornado destroyed around 50 buildings, was not warned ahead of time at 2 a.m. in the early morning, and caused at least four hundred thousand dollars in damages, it only caused minor injuries and zero deaths.
