Possible tornado strikes in Leopold, damages two buildings

LEOPOLD, Mo -- Pat Peters was just starting to talk about reviving the Monday music and dancing in her late husband's backyard shop. Sunday's tornado ruined those plans, but there is a bright side, said her daughter, Cindy Jansen, of Leopold.

"But we're all happy and safe sand no one got hurt," Jansen said. "Nothing bad happened, except to the buildings. We're very blessed and we have a great community."

A line of storms swept through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, spawning a series of funnel cloud reports.

Dan Spaeth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Paducah, Ky., said investigators will visit Leopold and two other areas where tornadoes likely hit: the Mount Vernon area of Southern Illinois and Hopkins County, Ky., on the western side of that state.

Hopkins County was so badly damaged by ice storms earlier this year, Spaeth said, "we're going to have a hard time determining [additional damage by Sunday[']s storm], the way the trees look around there."

Linda RedefferSome of the damage done to a building on the property of Pam Peters is seen Sunday following a severe storm in Leopold, Mo.

He said initial reports indicate a tornado hit Peters' property.

Pat Peters said the tornado took less than two minutes to do the damage. She only learned about the storm moments before it struck. One of her daughters, Valerie Peters, called after hearing a weather alert on her car radio while driving from St. Louis to visit her mother. The women were on the phone when Pat Peters looked out the window and saw the wind pick up.

"She was headed into her basement, but didn't quite make it there before it hit," said Jim Bollinger, emergency manager for Bollinger County. Peters was shaken by the storm, but not injured, he said.

Jansen spoke on the phone Sunday afternoon while a neighbor's saw whirred in the background. He was cutting off the damaged parts of a tree next to the Peters' carport, which is attached to the house. Most of the tree's top branches were damaged, but only a few shingles blew off the home's roof, Jansen said.

More than 20 people -- family, friends and neighbors -- showed up to help clear the property Sunday afternoon. Bollinger estimated the tornado caused more than $25,000 in damage to two outbuildings on the Peters property, one used to store farm equipment, the other a carpentry shop and onetime weekly music hall.

"Ambrose Peter's shop -- that's what they called it," Jansen said. "Everyone knew if something was going on, it was there."

The shop was her father's "pride and joy," Jansen said. "I guess when the wind got in there, it had no place to go and just went whoosh!"

Ambrose Peters, Leopold's former postmaster and a member of the town's school and fire boards, died Feb. 8. For years the Peters hosted a Monday night "pickin' and grinnin' party."

"People would dance and sing. Even if they couldn't sing, they'd sing anyway," Jansen said, laughing. "People came all the way from Illinois and Perryville."

Though funnel clouds were reported just west of Dutchtown in Cape Girardeau County, none appeared to touch down, said Cape Girardeau County emergency management director Richard Knaup. Winds gusts up to 62 mph were recorded at Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

He said the only damage reported in Cape Girardeau County as of 7 p.m. Sunday was a pole barn in Gordonville destroyed by 70 to 80 mph straight-line winds. An undetermined number of cows were injured, he said, and "one cow died."

In addition to responding to the pole barn damage, Gordonville fire chief Mark Koerber said firefighters also quelled a grass field blaze that threatened to "blow across the County Road 231 into woods near two houses, but the gravel road made a good firebreak," he said. The fire, started by a farmer hoping to clear the field before spring planting, "skimmed across the top of the wet ground," Koerber said.

He said nearly an inch of rain fell in less than 20 minutes during the worst of the storm.

"It could have been a lot worse," Knaup said.

Bollinger said with tornado season underway, he hopes more people learn that a tornado watch "means conditions are favorable for the development of a tornado" and a tornado warning means "it has developed and they have to take cover."

He said when tornado warning sirens sounded Sunday, several people called the sheriff's department to ask dispatchers what the sirens meant.

A statewide tornado awareness day test, scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, is intended to encourage people to learn what the siren means and plan how to respond during a weather emergency.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

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