Monett tornadoes most consequential since 2007 ice storm

Three tornadoes documented from onslaught, derecho possible, recovery and clean up continue for locals
The severe storm that blew across Lawrence and Barry counties on April 29 has been deemed the most consequential in damaging local infrastructure since the ice storm of 2007. Experts spent the week analyzing what happened and assessing the response.
The rapidly moving storm hit the area shortly after 9 a.m. What exactly was coming wasn’t initially clear because radar did not show hook echoes typical of tornadoes. David Compton, emergency management director for Monett and Barry County, said that while the investigation was continuing, he did not rule out that this may have been a derecho. Such a storm occurred in this area around 10 years ago, he recalled, rolling from Granby to Republic.
“A weak tornado has 80 to 90 mile-per-hour winds,” Compton said. “A derecho has 80-to-100 mile-per-hour straight line winds that can do a lot of damage. This may have been that or a variant of that spawning some side tornadoes.
“For the conditions present, it was surprising we had this much damage by a storm not forecast to be this severe. We’ve definitely seen this kind of damage before. Having been through a lot of storms, I view this as a fairly typical type of windstorm.”
Sarah Mareth, the operations manager for Lawrence County Emergency Services, said the dispatch center set off area sirens within one minute of receiving the severe storm warning from the National Weather Service. It is not clear if sirens were activated in Pierce City before the fast-moving storm hit. Julie Johnson, city clerk in Pierce City, was not surprised at the lack of warning, noting in the past warnings have come at times on very short notice, or sometimes not at all.
According to Mike Gervais, communications specialist for the City of Monett, sirens sounded at least five minutes ahead of the storm, giving city employees adequate time to retreat to the basement at City Hall.
Compton reported that Monett’s sirens had all been tested by a Kansas City technician the week prior to the storm. All Monett’s sirens have battery backup as well, enabling them to run even if the power goes out.
The type of storm also shared more characteristics of a derecho, lasting for close to 10 minutes as it moved, whereas tornadoes generally occur quickly and follow a specific track. The storm was also several miles wide.
What rolled into Monett came from an arm that more or less paralleled Highway 60. The leading edge skirted the Crestwood subdivision along Hwy. 60, one mile west of the city’s wastewater treatment plant, pushing over poles and pulling wires on the north side of the highway. Moving eastward, the storm flattened the West 60 Storage units on the north side of the highway, across from the main entrance to Jack Henry.
As the storm reached the intersection of Highways 60 and 37, Harold Schelin, president of Roderick Arms and Tool, located at Dairy Street and Hwy. 37, was standing in the glass vestibule of the plant’s office entrance watching the storm approach. Schelin recalled seeing pieces of his roof go flying, and the wind began pulling open the glass vestibule door. Holding onto the door, Schelin decided perhaps he was not in the ideal location for weathering such a blast, and retreated into the brick building. From there, through the north window, he saw his secretary’s car window being blown out.
As the onslaught continued, according to Steve Sperandio, Roderick’s vice president and general manager, the storm lifted the entire south edge of the plant roof and the southwest corner, exposing the inside machinery and dropping some of the supporting trusses. Skylights across the plant roof were either pulled up or broken by flying debris. All the windows in the plant’s service van on the north side of the plant were torn out, and sections of roofing landed in the roadway.
The flagpole at the corner of Highways 60 and 37 was bent over at its halfway point, something unseen in previous storms.
At South Park, the storm splintered one of the trees facing Hwy. 60 and placed a layer of evergreens over the roadway to the park lake. Several very large trees, one between the road and the main picnic pavilion west of the Park Casino, and another on the southwest corner of the Park Casino lawn, toppled with their ball of roots exposed, the latter falling across the sidewalk to the main Casino entrance. Trees behind the Casino were left in pieces, some on the road, and a large tree on the sledding hill, next to a disc golf basket, broke in half.
Other trees along the edge of the golf course next to the park fell directly to the east.
More than a mile to the south, the storm peeled the south side of the pitched roof off the Sunday school annex of the Waymark church at the far edge of the city limits, dumping debris in the lawn. Extra decorative roofing over the north side of the structure was also torn off. The northwest corner of the church building also received damage to the soffits and fascia to cause water leakage.
According to Neal Messer with Waymark, the roofing flew into nearby trees and knocked out the church’s well. Messer added that subsequent rain damaged the drywall and carpeting of the Sunday school annex, which will require substantial renovation, but he felt the building would survive. The church originally used that building for its offices, though those had since been moved back to the main facility.
Trees were also felled in the Lakewood Terrace subdivision, south of the B&B movie theater.
At Burl Fowler Stadium on 13th Street, the wind caught the banner that serves as a windbreak on the visitors’ side of the field, bending more than a dozen metal support poles, some as far as a 90-degree angle.
Compton said weather analysts diagnose tornadoes by the damage they leave. He noted wood frame houses have a specific type of damage based on wind speed. Weather teams look for whether debris is blown in one direction, more a reflection of straight-line winds, or if bark is stripped off tree trunks all the way around the tree, suggesting circular winds. The saturation point of soil, critical in explaining uprooted trees, comes into play in explaining damage. In this case, significantly saturated soil from a week of rain contributed to the lost trees.
“We blew the sirens when we saw wind blowing in two different directions and formed a couplet,” Compton said. “We had spotters reporting a lot of wind and hail. Diagnosing tornadoes is a little like Monday morning quarterbacking. We had people from the National Weather Service in Monett on Tuesday evening.”
The National Weather Service confirmed three tornadoes spawned out of the storm in Lawrence County. One was an EF-1 that ran three miles south of Freistatt for a little over four miles at a maximum width of 100 yards.
A second, classified as an EF-0, hit near the Lawrence and Stone County line, west of Bradford, staying on the ground for three miles, uprooting trees and damaging nearby structures.
The third, an EF-1, landed between Verona and Aurora, tracking for more than two miles on a due-east course, at a width of 100 yards, stopping west of Hwy. 39. That funnel tore the roof off the Aurora Church of Christ, as well as other structures, and uprooted trees.