Weather Outside Your Window: Confirmed tornado touches down south of St. Louis; Baseball-sized hail reported in Texas

Monday, March 25, 2019

Confirmed tornado touches down south of St. Louis; Baseball-sized hail reported in Texas

By Chaffin Mitchell, AccuWeather staff writer

Thunderstorms pummeled a swath of the southern U.S. through Sunday night, producing damaging winds, large hail and even a tornado.

The tornado reported in Cadet, Missouri, just south of St. Louis on Sunday evening was brief and reports say damage was minor.

"The storm that spawned the tornado caused a number of reports of golf-ball sized and larger hail. The largest reported was 2.5 inches. That’s nearly baseball-sized," according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Frank Strait.

There were several other reports of hail damage south and northwest of St. Louis, Missouri.

"Farther to the southwest, other storms in western Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma and North Texas have produced wind and hail damage," Strait said.

"The worst so far has been in Collin County, Texas, in and just south and west of McKinney. Baseball-sized hail was reported; it may have been even larger than that in a few places ," Strait said.

Another intense storm in LeFlore, Oklahoma also produced hail around baseball-sized.

Hail as large as golf balls continued to pummel northeastern Texas through the night, and several tornado warnings were issued for areas northeast of Dallas.

Strong storms blew into Kentucky, Tennessee and through Arkansas during the evening hours, leaving toppled trees and powerlines in their wake.

By sunrise, these storms had traversed southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana, where they produced similarly heavy rainfall and damaging winds.

Persistent, heavy rainfall inundated a swath of southern Arkansas. There were several reports of over 3 inches of rain in just a couple of hours, which heightened the threat for flash flooding.