Detective work by the National Weather Service has recently revealed that a tornado carved a rare, nearly 120 mile-long path from Arkansas into Missouri during the mid-March outbreak in the Midwest and South.
Big Picture
- The Path: Damage was found to be continuous across 117.15 miles from northern Arkansas to southeast Missouri for a tornado that struck on the evening of March 14, 2025, according to an updated survey released Saturday. That's broken into 93.6 miles in Arkansas and roughly another two dozen miles into Missouri. The tornado lasted over two hours.
- Why Nearly A Month Later?: Storm surveys from the National Weather Service are often preliminary, which means they can take many days, or this case, weeks to finalize details of because of various complexities. For this one, the NWS performed detective work to inspect satellite imagery and additional ground reports to connect what was originally thought to be two separate tornado paths in Arkansas into one single tornado path that also extended into Missouri.
- Maximum Damage: The twister produced up to EF4 damage with estimated 170-mph winds in Arkansas, near Larkin, and up to EF2 damage in southern Missouri. Incredibly, an automated weather station observed a gust up to 151 mph from the twister in Arkansas.
In Detail
- How The Distance Stacks Up: More volatile tornado setups can result in tornadoes that travel tens of miles. Cases like this one on March 14 where they track over 100 miles are much more rare. One of the longest-lived tornadoes in recent years struck Dec. 10, 2021, from far northwest Tennessee to central Kentucky. This twister tracked 165.7 miles over 178 minutes, or nearly 3 hours, causing EF4 damage in Mayfield, Kentucky.
- What's Average?: A majority of tornadoes, on average, last less than 10 minutes, according to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center. The average distance they have tracked based on data since 1950 is about 3.5 miles. Of course, that average masks out a broad spectrum from very brief twisters to much longer lasting ones.
(MORE: How Long Tornadoes Last)
More To Know
- Tornadoes Are Rated On The Enhanced Fujita Scale: Survey crews assign a rating from EF0 (light damage) to the rare EF5 (incredible damage), based on the most severe damage observed along a tornado's path, not by any other real-time metric such as Doppler radar or their appearance on video. Those surveys can happen hours to days later, depending on a variety of factors. In some cases like this one, satellite imagery can be used to assist in determining a tornado's path.
- Factors Weighed: The wind speed estimate, and therefore EF rating, is based on various damage indicators from trees and small barns to homes and large shopping centers. The quality of building construction is another factor in determining a tornado's rating. Check out this article from senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman for deeper dive on how storm surveys are completed, and the challenges crews can face.
Chris Dolce has been a senior digital meteorologist with weather.com for nearly 15 years after beginning his career with The Weather Channel in the early 2000s.
