Author: KMIZ

Jessica Hafner

The National Weather Service in Springfield on Monday confirmed a third tornado in Morgan County following Friday night’s severe weather. This tornado brings the total to five between Benton and Morgan counties, with surveys being done farther east in Callaway, Cole, Boone, and Moniteau counties by NWS St. Louis.

The survey team confirmed a pair of tornadoes that touched down in Morgan County shortly before 8:00 p.m.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum winds of 90 mph struck north of Gravois Mills, where several trees were uprooted, two out buildings were damaged, and a home lost a window. The tornado was about 300 yards wide and traveled for about 2.6 miles.

Another short-lived EF-0 tornado tracked north of Barnett, producing winds of up to 85 mph. It traveled for about 1.3 miles and had a width of 150 yards. Meteorologists found tree damage and bent metal rods that were sheltering hay bales.

The team confirmed a third, short-lived EF-0 tornado northwest of Gravois Mills that had wind speeds of up to 80 mph and found uprooted trees and damage to a barn along McCasland Rd.

The team was out on Monday working to finish surveys in Benton County to potentially extend tornado tracks and confirm more wind damage.

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Olivia Hayes

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia Police was on the scene of a crash involving two cars at the intersection of Elm Street and Providence Road in Columbia.

The road was partially blocked off for about an hour Sunday night.

CPD Sgt. Matthew Nichols told an ABC 17 News reporter on scene the crash happened around 6:20 p.m. Sunday. The intersection was partially closed off shortly after.

Nichols said one person was taken to a local hospital from the scene, but would not say the extent of their injuries.

At 7:05 p.m. the road was still facing a partial closure, but according Nichols police expect it to be cleared and fully opened back up shortly.

Check back for updates.

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Olivia Hayes

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Route K in Boone County opened back up about 20 minutes after being closed due to an accident between a car and a motorcycle.

First responders were called around 5:40 p.m. Sunday to the area of Route K. One lane of the road was closed down shortly after. An ABC 17 News reporter saw crews clear the road and open it back up shortly after 6 p.m.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Kyle Green tells ABC 17 News the extent of the injuries from the crash are unknown at this time.

Check back for updates.

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Marie Moyer

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

State and local governments will be given one more year to update their websites and apps to match requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act following an extension by the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice announced the initial order on April 24, 2024. Local governments with a total population of 50,000 or more were required to make web and mobile applications compliant with the ADA by April 24, 2026.

Effective April 20, 2026 the new deadline will be April 26, 2027. Local governments with a population of 50,000 and below will also get a deadline extension from April 26, 2027 to April 26, 2028.

The requirement falls under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The title focuses on the nondiscrimination based on disability in state and local government services. This includes how local governments communicate with people with disabilities. This also includes all public entities within the local government like county departments and public school districts.

Accessibility improvements are intended to support people with a broad range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, neurological, and physical conditions.

Visual accessibility improvements may include increasing text spacing and using sans-serif fonts to enhance readability. Governments may also adjust color contrast to ensure text stands out clearly against backgrounds. Websites are also recommended to avoid relying on colors like red and green for buttons or links that may be hard to distinguish for color-blind users.

Visually impaired users may also use screen readers, which read website pages to the user. These often follow the page from top to bottom and rely on a clear website order and headlines.

“It’s doable, it’s not impossible, but it’s really, really difficult,” Julie Brinkoff, Project Director of Great Plains ADA Center said. “By adding this one thing, all of a sudden you just change the ability for someone to go through a document easily, to find content, to go back and review content.”

Other additions include making websites friendly for keyboard users who do not use a mouse and including an option to add more time when filling out forms. Alternative text may also be added to describe images on a website through screen readers.

Brinkoff adds that when training organizations in following ADA guidelines, online forms often have many errors.

“When you’re having difficulty with a form or a form can’t be submitted, there should be a pop-up or some type of way that the user is informed that there is a difficulty and what that difficulty is, how it can be remediated,” Brinkoff said. “Think again for the blind user who’s getting no information and, you know, they don’t have a way to even know if the form went through or what’s going on.”

The Boone County government tells ABC 17 NEws website accommodations are moving along smoothly. According to the last U.S. Census from 2020, Boone County has a population of over 183,000. They were initially notified of the updated deadline on April 17.

“It’s a continual effort to make these improvements,” Boone County Southern District Commissioner Justin Aldred said. “When we implement these changes for ADA, it also makes things better for the wider group of users and the community at large that uses it.”

Aldred adds that many changes, like descriptive text, are also helpful for rural residents with limited internet.

“This is something that we want to make really, really good for our users because ultimately for a lot of people that live across the county, this may be their first time interacting with local government,” Aldred said.

The Boone County Government reports to have been working on overall website improvements since 2007, focusing specifically on ADA guidelines after the order in 2024. The team has updated around 455 web pages.

Aldered adds that the changes have not resulted in additional costs, just extra hours for those working on Boone County Government websites.

“We have our local government here with 13 independent elected officials, all sorts of individuals that have different offices, different goals, different objectives,” Aldred said. “Ultimately we have a wonderful I.T. team that supported them and putting changes together and making sure that everything is up to date.”

With the additional time, Boone County’s current plan is to manage how the county’s website interacts with third-party products.

“Just making sure that everything talks to each other properly and that everything works as it should,” Aldered said.

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Marie Moyer

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Strong winds and heavy storms Friday night left thousands without power and caused one house to catch on fire.

On Saturday morning, the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives’ Statewide Outage Map reported over 2,000 people in Morgan County without power.

Gravois Fire Protection District Chief Dustin Hancock reported that crews responded to around 10 weather-related incidents, including vehicle crashes, blocked roads and downed powerlines.

This included a house fire just north of Gravois Mills after a nearby tree was struck by lightning, catching a house on fire at around 6:40 p.m. Friday.

An ambulance was sent to a nearby station to shelter as six GFPD fire personnel moved to the basement of the home they were responding to. Crews used a ventilation fan and oxygen tanks to manage smoke when inside the home.

The two residents inside the home were able to escape safely, taking shelter at a nearby residence. The storm picked up at around 7:15 p.m. as crews were putting out remaining hotspots of the home.

“I haven’t had to do that in my career up until this point,” Hancock said. “We kind of talked about it and said like, ‘Hey, we can’t leave, we’ve got too much going on here still, and we’re not confident that the fire’s out, so what we’re going to do is we’ve got a full basement here.'”

There were no reported injuries from fire crews.

Following the storm, local dispatch was also overwhelmed with calls, leading to Hancock routing non-life-threatening emergency calls to his own phone to dispatch teams while area command handled more critical calls.

“We set up an area command post here across the street, utilized a Sunrise Beach as a mobile command trailer, so that was super helpful,” Hancock said. “It took some load off of our dispatch center, because they were dealing with Stover and Versailles and everybody else around us.”

Residents in Stover were also cleaning up Saturday as more than 600 residents saw outages starting around 8:30 p.m. Friday.

Ameren crews were seen by ABC 17 News in the area starting Saturday morning, with workers expected to continue operations through the night after several trees fell on power lines in town.

“It sounded like a train almost, and then it was just about five minutes, you couldn’t see nothing, it was real, real scary,” Stover resident Tommy Remington said.

ABC 17 News saw several large trees being broken down and collapsed roofs on a few buildings in Stover.

“My boss’s sawmill just down N Road here, it’s upside down and the tire shop, Menning’s Tire over here, the roof got torn off,” Remington said.

Stover Resident Lynette Black was in Versailles with her family when the storm blew through town.

“As we were driving in last night after the storm had passed, it was a very eerie kind of feeling, there was no power in town and everything was very dark,” Black said.

Throughout the day Saturday, Black began handing out water bottles, freshly-grilled hot dogs and snacks to first responders, linemen and other residents in the area.

“We’ve been without power since about 8:30 yesterday evening,” Black said. “So nobody is able to cook meals for themselves and this is a way that community members can come and have something that’s warm to eat.”

Black adds that community members often come together in times like these following storms.

“We have a very tight knit community and everybody’s always pitching in to help each other,” Black said. “People have come from other towns and are helping just clean up, I’ve had people from neighboring towns in Cole Camp and Versailles drop off chips and cookies and water.”

According to Ameren’s website at around 8:45 p.m. Saturday, power in Stover is expected to be restored by 9:30 p.m. Ameren officials however, tell ABC 17 News work is moving slower than expected with multiple downed trees in the area.

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Jessica Hafner

The National Weather Service in Springfield has confirmed two tornadoes touched down around Warsaw in Benton County Friday night.

Severe weather spanned the entire region, with these two tornadoes touching down and lifting between 7:23 p.m. and 7:26 p.m.

An EF-1 tornado with winds of up to 90 mph tracked east across the northern side of Warsaw for a little over two and a half miles, stopping near Highway 65. It had a width of about 300 yards and flipped multiple mobile homes that were sitting on cinder blocks. Several trees were uprooted and snapped. Meteorologists who surveyed the damage noted that the damage likely extends farther southwest and northeast, and there are plans to go back and examine more of the track.

A second EF-0 tornado was caused damage to building on Highway 83 and Highway MM southeast of Warsaw. There was heavy tree damage in this area, and further surveying is also planned for this track. The maximum winds were recorded at 80 mph, and the tornado’s width was around 200 yards.

As of 9:00 p.m. Saturday night, there were still a few hundred to 1000 customers without power in the region stretching toward the Lake of the Ozarks.

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Olivia Hayes

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Warsaw R-IX School District will be closed Monday due to storm damage clean up, according to a social media post from the district.

The district said no students or staff were hurt on school campuses.

District staff may access the South Elementary building if needed. The school district said it hopes to resume classes on Tuesday.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia Public Schools announced in a Friday press release that Douglass High School Principal Eryca Neville has been named the district’s executive director of alternative education.

Neville has been the principal at Douglass High School since 2011 and was a teacher in the district before, the release says. She serves with the Heart of Missouri United Way, Heart of Missouri CASA, the Flourish Initiative, the release says.

The release says the new position “is designed to strengthen the district’s ability to support students with diverse academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs through a comprehensive and aligned K–12 alternative education model.”

“The position will enhance coordination of services, ensure compliance with state and federal requirements, and improve student outcomes through focused leadership, data-driven decision-making, and strong partnerships with staff, families, and community agencies,” the release says.

Exact salary information for Neville’s new role was not announced on Friday, but Board of Education documents indicate it is classified as “professional support staff” with a Grade 9 salary schedule, ranging from $136,917.76 to $201,149.76.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Branches and trees were down around Mid-Missouri after storms rolled through the area on Friday.

The threat of high winds and hail damage prompted the ABC 17 Stormtrack Weather Team to issue a Weather Alert Day for Friday. Most of Mid-Missouri was in tornado watch on Friday evening. Gov. Mike Kehoe had preemptively declared a state of emergency on Friday afternoon.

Thousands of people lost power, particularly in the Lake of the Ozarks area, but strong winds went through much of the area.

The Stover Police Department had told ABC 17 News at 9:05 p.m. that Highway 52 was closed at the city’s eastern border through Versailles.

Cole County Emergencies Services wrote in a Friday night press release that downed trees and utilities lines were reported throughout the county.

“During the height of the storm, a bus transporting students from a southwestern school district was entering Cole County,” Chief Eric Hoy wrote in the release. “As a precautionary measure, the bus was directed to a safe location at the Cole County Sheriff’s Department. Cole County Emergency Services personnel assisted in coordinating temporary lodging for the group following the storm.”

Additionally, trees were seen down in Fulton and Hartsburg.

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Mitchell Kaminski

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ) 

Traffic signal timing is being adjusted across Columbia as local and state officials attempt to combat congestion tied to the ongoing Improve I-70 project and related road closures.

Columbia Public Works said in social media posts on Wednesday that it is reviewing traffic impacts and modifying city-operated signals where feasible, but noted that many of the affected intersections fall under the Missouri Department of Transportation’s control. Officials are urging drivers to expect delays and plan ahead.

“For the City of Columbia, timing adjustments have now been made at East St. Charles Road and Keene Street,” John Ogan, a spokesman for Columbia Public Works, told ABC 17 News. 

Ogan added several other city-operated signals are being monitored for potential changes, including intersections at Broadway and Old 63, Broadway and Trimble Road, Brickton Lane and Trimble Road, and Conley Road at the Lowe’s entrance.

Ogan said the changes focus on redistributing green-light time based on traffic demand.

“In general, these adjustments involve modifying how long each direction receives a green light based on observed traffic patterns,” Ogan said. “At locations like East St. Charles Road and Keene Street, staff have observed where traffic is building up and adjusted the signal timing to give more green time to the heavier traffic movements, helping reduce backups and improve overall flow through the intersection.”

Ogan said city staff will continue to monitor conditions and make targeted adjustments as traffic patterns shift.

The Missouri Department of Transportation also reported increased congestion at multiple signals due to closures associated with the Improve I-70 program.

“We are aware of increased traffic congestion at a number of signals around Columbia due to the recent closures and traffic impacts associated with the Improve I-70 Program,” MoDOT spokeswoman Marcia Johnson said in a statement. “Our Traffic team has made modifications to signal timing and continues to monitor and adjust, when possible.”

MoDOT said it has already made changes at the Highway 63 and Route WW interchange, with the primary goal of preventing traffic from backing up onto Highway 63. Officials noted extending green time for southbound ramps has reduced backups on the highway but contributed to longer delays on Route WW.

The agency said congestion increased further following the recent removal of the St. Charles Bridge and earlier closures at Conley Road and I-70 Drive Southeast. Additional adjustments may be considered once the Conley roundabout opens, with a focus on improving flow along Route WW and Keene Street.

MoDOT also reported increased traffic along Route PP/Clark during the bridge removal, with backups forming on the Highway 63 Connector eastbound ramp and westbound Route PP/Clark. Engineers are evaluating whether signal timing changes at the connector could help alleviate congestion, though no decision has been made.

“I would say I travel through this area, through that intersection, get it on 70  at least once a week and it’s it’s been definitely a little bit of a struggle to try to get on 70 consistently,” said Dominick, a Columbia resident, when asked about delays at stoplights near the connector. “There’s been quite a few times. I’ve come up from 63 trying to get on 70, and then I would have to wait, at least a cycle or two, before I get on.” 

Looking ahead, a separate project at Highway and Grindstone Parkway is expected to close northbound ramps beginning next week. MoDOT said the closure will likely shift more traffic to the Stadium Boulevard and Discovery Parkway interchanges, where additional signal timing adjustments are planned.

Officials say drivers should continue to expect changing traffic patterns as construction progresses and signal timing is refined.

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