Suspected tornado destroyed two buildings in Leopold

LEOPOLD, Mo. — Pat Peters had just started talking about reviving the Monday night 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, Mo.

"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 Sunday afternoon, spawning a series of funnel cloud reports. Dan Spaeth, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Paducah, Ky., said investigators will visit Leopold and two other areas where tornadoes likely hit, the Mt. Vernon area of Southern Illinois and Hopkins County, Ky., on the west 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."

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

Pat Peters said the tornado took less than two minutes to do the damage, just before noon. 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 saw whirred in the background. She said a neighbor was trimming a badly damaged tree next to the Peters' carport, which is attached to the house. 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 after noon, Jansen said. 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."

Ambrose Peters, Leopold's former postmaster and a member of the town's school and fire boards, died on Feb. 8. For years Ambrose and Pat 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.

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 mile an hour straight-line winds. An undetermined amount of cattle were injured, he said, and "one cow died."

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.