A tornado touched down near Unionville, Missouri, on Wednesday as a severe weather outbreak moved across northern Missouri, and video posted by The Weather Channel showed the twister as it came down. In the same storm system, damage was reported near Jameson, about 80 miles northeast of Kansas City.
The tornado report mattered immediately because it came amid a burst of severe weather that also produced multiple tornado reports in the Kansas City viewing area. KCTV5’s First Warn 5 Weather team said there were three reported tornadoes on Wednesday, all north of the Kansas City metro, and said the reports were backed by strong video evidence. One of those reports was in the area where Peggy Barnett and Walter Barnett live, 2.5 miles east of Jameson on State Highway P.
The Barnetts stepped outside Wednesday afternoon to assess the damage and found uprooted trees, splintered limbs and a power line ripped loose across the highway and thrown into their yard. Howard Bailey brought a skid loader to clear the driveway. Walter Barnett said he heard an alarm on his phone about 4 p.m., and the strongest winds hit before the couple made it to the basement.
Peggy Barnett said the wind sounded like a vacuum unit hooked up to the whole house, trying to suck the insides out. Walter Barnett said magnets were pulled off their refrigerator and that he nearly was pulled out the door. The house was left untouched, but the property around it was not. Peggy Barnett said they were left with “an awful mess to clean up.”
There is still a gap between what was seen on video and what will be formally confirmed. KCTV5 said the National Weather Service can take a day or two to confirm whether the damage was caused by a tornado, plot a path and issue a rating, and it was not immediately clear whether the tornado near Jameson was the same event reported near Unionville or a separate one. Walter Barnett said a tornado damaged a shed on the property about 10 years ago, but Wednesday’s storm was the kind that stripped the yard and left the couple waiting for the official word on exactly where the damage track ran.
For now, the clearest answer is that Wednesday’s outbreak produced at least one tornado near Unionville and left a trail of damage in north Missouri. The next answer comes from the weather service, which will decide whether the reported tornado near Jameson is confirmed, mapped and rated.
