Missouri known for extremes.
by Jim McCarty | jmccarty@ruralmissouri.coop
Don’t like Missouri weather? Just wait and it will change. Situated at the center of weather patterns that can suck warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, dry air from the Southwest deserts and cold air from Canada, Missouri’s weather is the result of a collision of these competing air masses. Throw in the lack of any natural barriers like major mountain ranges, it’s no wonder storms, cold fronts and heat waves can sweep into the state with dramatic results. Over the years this has produced weird, wild and unpredictable weather.
Take the wacky weather on Nov. 11, 1911. As the sun rose, temperatures around the state were unseasonably warm, climbing into the 70s. By noon a southerly breeze pushed the mercury into the lower 80s, breaking high temperature records in Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia and St. Louis.
Residents enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather, unaware that an arctic cold front was poised to enter the state. In Columbia the southerly wind shifted to northerly gusts topping 40 mph. From 82 degrees at 2 p.m., the temperature plummeted to a cold, rainy 38 one hour later — that’s 44 degrees in an hour.
Soon the rain turned to sleet. By midnight Columbia saw a record low for the day of 13 degrees. In one day, the temperature fell 69 degrees. This record still stands. For the state the temperature drop averaged 50 degrees in less than 3 hours and 65 to 70 degrees over 18 hours.
Precipitation also can vary wildly from year to year. Missouri’s driest year was 1953, when 25.12 inches fell. Compare that to the wettest year, 1973, with 57.14 inches. Snowfall can fluctuate too. The snowiest month ever was March 1960 with a state average snowfall of 20.6 inches. However, Kansas City recorded 40.2 inches of snow in March 1912, while the deepest snow — 36 inches — was recorded in Union in 1960.
Here’s some of the wildest weather Missouri has experienced in its 200-plus years of statehood.
Warm as Warsaw
Extremely high temperatures were the rule all over the United States during the summer of 1954. All-time records fell as far north as South Dakota, with the Kansas City Times reporting this was the worst heat wave since 1936 when there were 53 days of 100-degree heat.
Missouri was no exception, with Warsaw and Union tying for the hottest temperature ever recorded in the state, 118 degrees on July 14, 1954. Elsewhere in the state, the mercury climbed to 114 in Butler, 113 in Columbia and 110 in Rolla.
The front page of the Sedalia Democrat carried a banner headline reading: “Today is hottest day ever in Sedalia.” The official reading at 2:55 p.m. was 115 degrees, 1 degree higher than the previous record.
The Washington Citizen opined that “everybody except the ice man agreed that it was just too blamed hot.” The paper reported an egg placed on an iron lid in front of the office “slowly went through the process of frying.”
The blame for the hot weather was high pressure that pushed cooler air to the north, drawing hot air from the south into the Midwest for an extended period. The Times reported July 14 marked the eighth day that month the 100-degree mark was reached. No relief was in sight. The blistering heat would last into September.
The Kansas City Star reported 52 heat-related deaths in Missouri. Parks were packed with people camped out to beat the heat. Factory workers walked off the job, saying it was too hot to work. Heavy poultry, cattle and hog losses were reported in Union, with stockyards statewide crowded from a rush to market livestock before they died.
Hot as the temperature was that summer of 1954, it paled in comparison to August 1936 when the lowest temperature recorded for 16 days was 103 degrees. That wasn’t the record heat wave though. From July 20 to 25, 1934, the state average maximum temperature was a sizzling 108 degrees.
Cold, colder, coldest
Ironically, Warsaw is also the location for Missouri’s lowest recorded temperature. That bitterly cold record came on Feb. 13, 1905, when the mercury dropped to 40 degrees below zero.
The Marshall Republican reported the area was in the grasp of an unusually severe blizzard. “Cold, colder, coldest is about the way the weather has been acting this winter,” read the front-page story. A mild fall had everyone thinking winter would be the same.
The paper related: “Therefore, when zero was reached people thought that the end of their endurance surely was reached. They thought the same when 5, then 12, then 13 below zero was registered. But there certainly was a cold surprise in store for them Monday morning when those thermometers having the downward capacity registered all the way from 20 to 30 below, with the government thermometer at twenty-six and a half below. Our people were literally frozen up and snowed under.”
According to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat,1905 saw the coldest February of any the Weather Bureau had recorded, with a mean temperature of 18 above through Feb. 13. That followed a bitter January that was the coldest since 1885. By Jan. 26 the Mississippi River had frozen over, allowing residents to walk across the river.
In more recent memory, the statewide average temperatures for the winters of 1976-1977, 1977-1978 and 1978-1979 ranked as the 7th, 2nd and 1st coldest winters on record for Missouri, respectively.
In 1977, Columbia would see a record 54.9 inches of snow and an average temperature of 24.3 degrees. Two years later, Cape Girardeau and Scott counties would see 24 inches of snow in a single day, a record snowfall they would share with four other Missouri counties set in 1911, 1925 and 2011.
World-record rain
While Warsaw and Union can both claim Missouri weather records, Holt is the location of the heaviest amount of rain in the shortest period of time ever recorded. The world-record rainfall took place between 6 and 8 p.m. on June 22, 1947. In just 42 minutes, 12 inches of rain fell on the town located north of Kansas City.
June 1947 was the wettest month on record for northwest Missouri, dating back to 1888. The storm that put Holt in the world-record books caused already swollen rivers to overflow. The St. Joseph Gazette reported rail traffic all over northwest Missouri was halted when tracks washed out on every line. Vacationers were stranded at area lakes. One couple boating on a lake near Agency was forced to shelter outdoors as a tornado passed overhead. Violent electrical storms were experienced everywhere. Many small towns were cut off as roadways and bridges washed away.
As the heavy rain made its way to the Missouri River and downstream, it caused the worst flood then on record for St. Louis. Only one east-west road in the state — Highway 50 — was open. High water closed access to five of the seven Missouri River bridges.
An article in the July 12 Kansas City Times put the wild weather — including bitter cold temperatures in the North-Central U.S., a heat wave in the Midwest and a record year for tornado deaths — in perspective. It quoted Oscar Tenenbaum, a Kansas City weather forecaster working in Washington, D.C., at the time, who said the spring weather was a bit unusual, “but not unusually unusual.”
The writer boiled down the scientist’s meteorological jargon to explain the turbulent weather in layman’s terms: “It means simply that a lot of cold air from the North tangled with a lot of hot air from the South and brewed up a lot of no good.”
Tenenbaum added that the atomic bomb had nothing to do with heavy May snowfall in Nebraska, floods in Iowa nor a tornado in Ohio. “The bomb was credited for this funny weather all over the country by experts including a capital taxi driver, a Senate page boy and a Chinese chef in a downtown restaurant,” said the scientist.
The Great Flood
In a state blessed with so many rivers, it’s no surprise floods have been the most frequent natural disasters for Missouri. The greatest of them all came in 1993 when the Mississippi River crested at 49.58 feet in St. Louis, the highest level ever recorded.
According to the National Weather Service, the 1993 flood was the worst flood ever for the United States: “The size and impact of the Great Flood of 1993 was unprecedented and has been considered the most costly and devastating flood to ravage the U.S. in modern history. The number of record river levels, the aerial extent, the number of persons displaced, amount of crop and property damage and its duration surpassed all earlier U.S. floods in modern times.”
The stage was set for record flooding with wet 1992 fall weather that saturated the soil in the upper Missouri and Mississippi river basins. What followed was persistent rain that continued to fall on the same areas. As much as 4 feet of rain fell in some places. The flooding shattered records set in the significant 1973 Mississippi River and 1951 Missouri River floods.
By July torrential rainfall caused the big rivers to breach levees, with rainfall amounts of 5 to 7 inches in 24 hours common in the river basins. Rainfall amounts were between 6 and 7 inches above normal at Columbia and Kansas City.
The Mississippi River at St. Louis crested at 49.58 feet on Aug. 1, the National Weather Service reported, nearly 20 feet above flood stage and with a peak flow rate of 1.08 million cubic feet per second. That amount of water would fill the old Busch Stadium in 69 seconds.
The Mississippi wouldn’t drop below flood stage at St. Louis until Oct. 7, 103 days after the Great Flood began. Damage from the flooding can still be seen today.
Tornado Alley
When someone mentions Tornado Alley, most Missourians might think of Sedalia where an EF2 tornado struck the Missouri State Fair in 1952, resulting in one fatality and 13 injuries and extensively damaging the fairgrounds. But a survey of Missouri counties by the National Weather Service showed the area with the most tornadoes from 1950 to 2016 is southwest Missouri. In that study, Newton County led the state with 46 twisters while nearby Jasper County was second with 43.
Small wonder then that the most devastating tornado is the one that struck Joplin on May 22, 2011. That tornado ranks as the deadliest in history, claiming the lives of 161 people. It was also the costliest storm in state history, causing $2.8 billion in damages.
On that Sunday afternoon, survivors reported the sky turned a deep midnight blue before a mile-wide tornado touched down in the city of 50,000. It struck a densely populated section of Joplin and left a path of destruction 4 miles long. More than 2,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, including St. John’s Regional Medical Center, Joplin High School, a Walmart and a Home Depot.
The destruction was so severe U.S. Rep. Billy Long stated: “The pictures on TV don’t do it justice. It looks like a nuclear bomb has hit.”
Missouri has been the site of many other devastating tornadoes. The March 18, 1925, Tri-State Tornado touched down near Ellington and stayed on the ground for 3 hours, traveling 219 miles through Illinois and Indiana.
On May 9, 1927, a tornado struck Poplar Bluff, killing 83 people in the southeast Missouri town. In September of that year, St. Louis was hit by a tornado that caused 72 deaths and property losses of $22 million. This capped the most disastrous year for tornadoes in Missouri when 176 persons lost their lives.
More recently, 2006 was the wildest year for wind, with 101 tornadoes reported. On March 12 alone, 38 tornadoes struck Missouri.