Clinton, MO, resident escaped tornado just in the nick of time: ‘Never again’
After the tornado sirens cut out, Andrew Donaldson stepped out of his Clinton home and looked to the sky. Without their warning wail, he assumed he was safe.
But in the sky, he saw the unmistakable mark of a tornado: rotation.
He bolted back inside. The winds clawed the door from his grasp as he made it in the house, where he, his ex-wife and two dogs waited for the tornado to tear by. Across the street, the winds sent a tree onto his neighbor’s new truck.
“The first tornado I ever saw, and it was from the inside,” Donaldson said Thursday, still shaken by what he experienced.
“From now on, anything like that happens, my ass is going to be inside the bathroom,” he said. “I’m not going to go out and look no more. I was like, ‘I want to see the tornado, I want to see it.’ Never again, never again.”
The storm system that rolled through Clinton Wednesday night produced a pair of tornadoes around 6 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. The storm left behind damaged homes and buildings, splintered trees and brush, but caused no injuries, authorities said. Clinton sits about 75 miles southeast of Kansas City.
Donaldson’s home suffered roof and garage damage, and the winds destroyed a fence. Across the street, chainsaws buzzed on Thursday as community members worked to clear away splintered tree limbs from a home that seemed to have taken the brunt of the tornado’s force.
Donaldson said his home was previously struck by a tornado about 15 years ago.
“The first time, I was asleep,” he said with a chuckle.
The Clinton School District canceled in-person classes for Thursday but said later that the overall impact on buildings was “minimal.” A few air conditioning units at Clinton Intermediate School were moved or damaged, and staff found a minor roof leak. Solar panels on the building’s roof were also damaged.
“Very happy to report no injuries, fatalities, anything like that,” said Henry County Sheriff Aaron Brown. “Lot of property damage, but that’s what the community is for. And insurance.”
The first tornado, classified as an EF-1, touched down near Truman Lake, south of town, and traveled for about 2.5 miles before it ended near East Clinton Street and South 8th Street, a survey determined. The tornado’s peak wind speed reached 98 miles per hour.
The second tornado, an EF-0, began near East Lincoln Street, traveled northeast and crossed Highway 7. That tornado traveled for about 1.85 miles and had a peak wind speed of 70 miles per hour.
Dale and Jennifer Koster, who have lived in their new home on Colony Street near a quiet conservation area south of town for a little less than a year, spent part of their wedding anniversary on Wednesday wondering what the storm would bring. Dale said he saw debris circulating in the sky and saw the wind rattling a grove of trees behind their home.
“They told us when we moved here a year ago, this place has never gotten hit by a tornado,” he said Thursday mid-cleanup. “And it hasn’t … until yesterday.”
In the end, the tornado that passed through their neighborhood snapped off trees and sent a large limb through their roof. A short distance north, the twister destroyed a storage building for a business and threw debris across a field.
Said Dale: “It was our anniversary yesterday, so I’m sitting out there watching this stuff going, ‘Wouldn’t that be something if we’d go out together on our 38th anniversary?’ (Jennifer) goes, ‘Don’t say (expletive) like that.’”
“It’s a great anniversary, nobody got hurt,” he said. “I got my wife firewood for our anniversary, and I might even get her a new roof. You tell me. That’s going to be twenty grand for the roof.”
“—I already had a new roof,” Jennifer quipped.
This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 5:39 PM.
