The national weather service in St. Louis revised its May 16, 2025 tornado damage assessment after a year-long review of new ground survey data and aerial imagery, and said two tornadoes hit the St. Louis metropolitan area. The update added more than 10,000 damage points and expanded the official record for the storm.
St. Louis County track
The stronger tornado was rated EF-3 and tracked through St. Louis County, St. Louis City and far-western Madison County, Illinois before dissipating outside Granite City. NWS St. Louis widened that tornado to 3,168 yards, or 1.8 miles, making it the widest tornado in the region since 1950.
Madison County tornado
A second tornado, rated EF-1, had maximum wind speeds of 107 mph and tracked through western Madison County before dissipating just east of SIU Edwardsville. Its path width was 525 yards, or 0.3 miles.
New damage points
NWS St. Louis said most of the added damage points came from the Missouri Structural Assessment and Visual Evaluation Coalition. The updated dataset gave forecasters a more complete damage assessment, including a swath that exceeded 2 miles once non-tornadic wind south and east of the tornado’s path was included.
The revised assessment matters to anyone comparing storm records or reviewing local damage maps, because it changes the count, the track width and the official footprint of the May 16 event. The damage assessment can be viewed, interacted with and downloaded from the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
