The National Weather Service (NWS) says an EF-0 tornado touched down Saturday night in southwest Missouri’s Polk County, near Fair Play. There were no reports of injuries.

The National Weather Service (NWS) says a tornado touched down on December 28, 2019 near Fair Play, northwest of Springfield (map courtesy of NWS Springfield Twitter)

NWS Springfield meteorologist Mark Burchfield tells Missourinet the tornado was on the ground for about three minutes, with estimated peak winds of 80 miles per hour.

“There was some damage to some farm buildings along with some trees that were uprooted and snapped,” Burchfield says.

Fair Play is near the Polk-Cedar County border, northwest of Springfield. The NWS Springfield office issued numerous tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings Saturday night, across the Ozarks.

Meantime, the NWS says the storm damage done Saturday evening near the Missouri-Arkansas border was done by straight-line winds, not a tornado. Mr. Burchfield says NWS survey teams have been in southern Missouri’s Taney and Ozark counties today (Monday).

“There was also some uprooted trees and a little bit of other damage there, it looked like to maybe a parked tractor trailer unit that was parked that got moved a little bit,” says Burchfield.

He says the straight-line winds impacted the small towns of Rueter, Protem and Theodosia, near the Mark Twain National Forest.

Click here to listen to Brian Hauswirth’s full interview with National Weather Service (NWS) Springfield meteorologist Mark Burchfield, which was recorded on December 30, 2019:

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