An EF-3 tornado barreled its way more than 40 miles across portions of St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, Perry and Randolph (Illinois) counties Sunday evening, damaging several homes in the St. Mary area shortly after 9 a.m.
No injuries were reported, though there was significant damage on Seventh Street, to both residences as well as the Antique Mall.
Citizens Electric Corporation initially said 1,700 members were without power after the evening of storms came through.
A preliminary damage survey by the National Weather Service confirmed five tornadoes in southeast Missouri and southwest Illinois Oct. 24. Besides the twister which passed through St. Mary, another EF-3 twister with a max wind speed of 140 mph passed just north of Fredericktown and entered the southwest portion of Perry County, plus two more EF-1 tornadoes were confirmed, one in Reynolds County that traveled 1.15 miles with max winds
105 mph and another in Iron County which had max winds of 95 mph and went 0.3 miles.
The surveys of the damage began Oct. 25 and were concluded Oct. 26.
In many of the cases, the areas to access were difficult to get to, according to Mark Fuchs of the National Weather Service in St. Louis.
It was a “painstakingly long process,” Fuchs noted.
The storm that passed through St. Mary continued to the Chester area. Initially, it was rated as an EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with max winds of 150 mph and a total length of 42.4 miles, but this was upgraded to an EF-3 tornado Tuesday evening. This does not necessarily mean that EF-3 damage was sustained for the entire track of the tornado.
Shirley Grogg resides on Seventh Street in St. Mary. He has called the town home for the past four decades. Sunday evening, as he paid attention to the threatening weather, he described the arrival of the tornado.
“The sirens were going off and I have a weather radio, too, which was saying it was supposed to hit at Bloomsdale first,” he said. “But then it kind of slid, didn’t really go there and it came this way, and they it was headed toward 55, and then wherever they said (Highways) J and N, at Ozora, I knew that’s getting too close.”
The tornado wasn’t in the area very long, he noted.
“You heard the wind pick up, and you heard the tin going from some place, and then I’ll say less than a minute (later), that was it,” he said.
As for checking on the damage, that wouldn’t occur for several more hours.
“There was not really much you could do at night, you didn’t have electric,” Grogg said.
Right whenever the tornado came through, the power went out, Grogg noted. Contact was made with an insurance provider, notifying the business of potential tornado damage.