On This Date: Hurricane Ione Is North Carolina’s Third In 5 Weeks
September isn’t a particularly active month for tornadoes, except those associated with hurricanes and tropical storms.
But on Sept. 22, 2006, 19 years ago today, an intense tornado tore through parts of southeast Missouri and southern Illinois late in the afternoon.
The twister first touched down near Perryville, Missouri, then tracked 27 miles to just north of Murphysboro, Illinois, 23 minutes later.
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It reached its peak intensity in Crosstown, Missouri, where the tornado was rated F4.
Miraculously, nobody was killed, and only 5 were injured. According to the National Weather Service damage survey, “four well constructed homes…were leveled to the foundation.” Over 100 other homes were damaged, hundreds of trees were either uprooted or damaged and over 100 power poles were broken by the tornado.
This was just one of 50 tornadoes from Sept. 21-23 across the Plains into the Ohio Valley and Southeast.
According to the Tornado Archive, there has not been another September U.S. tornado rated F/EF4 or higher in the 19 years since.
A Feb. 28, 2017 EF4 tornado struck just north of Perryville, Missouri, and remained on the ground for over an hour.
Damage from an F4 tornado on Sept. 22, 2006.
(NWS-Paducah, Kentucky)
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.