A rare, late-season tornado outbreak affected portions of the Southern and Midwestern United States from the evening of December 10 to the early morning of December 11, 2021. The event came to fruition as a trough progressed eastward across the United States, interacting with an unseasonably moist and unstable environment across the Mississippi Valley. Tornado activity began in northeastern Arkansas, before progressing into Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The most prolific activity was caused by a long-track supercell thunderstorm that produced a family of strong tornadoes, if not a single long-track tornado, across four states. The tornadoes first touched down in northeastern Arkansas, and tracked through the Missouri Bootheel, ripping through towns such as Monette and Leachville, Arkansas, and Hayti and Caruthersville, Missouri; after crossing the Mississippi River into portions of West Tennessee, the storm eventually tore through western Kentucky, where the town of Mayfield suffered catastrophic damage.
