EF1 Tornado — Choctaw, Alabama

2022-03-30 · near Ararat, Choctaw, Alabama

Event narrative

This is the second segment of an EF1 tornado that began just southwest of Southern Choctaw High School snapping multiple hardwood and softwood trees.

The beginning point is estimated just southwest of the high school

due to limited road access. Strong damaging winds accompanied the

rear flank downdraft associated with the tornado resulting in

damage to outdoor bleachers and small outbuildings by the sports

field. A bus was also overturned in the parking lot with minor

structural damage to the backside of the school. The tornado

continued tracking northeast, both widening and strengthening

impacting several homes and snapping/uprooting multiple trees and

snapping powerlines as it crossed Highway 17. This was the

strongest point along the tornado path with near 110mph winds. The

tornado continued tracking northeast causing more sporadic EF0 to

EF1 damage along the rest of its path to the Marengo County

border with damage generally limited to a few snapped/uprooted

softwood and hardwood trees, along with minor roof damage to a few

homes. The tornado began to strengthen and widen again as it

approached the Tombigbee River with the last accessible damage

point on Ararat Road where there was notable snapped

softwood/hardwood trees. The tornado crossed into Marengo County before briefly crossing back into Choctaw County before again moving back into Marengo County.

Wider weather episode

A very active severe weather season continued as an outbreak of severe thunderstorms occurred across the area from the evening of the 30th into the early morning hours on the 31st. A strong spring storm system moved across the area. Ahead of the system plenty of Gulf moisture returned to the central Gulf coast. This led to a very unstable atmosphere over the region which combined to strong wind shear to produce 18 tornadoes which were rated from EF-0 to EF-2. In addition to the tornadoes, the storms produced damaging straight line winds and large hail. Numerous reports of damage came in from southeast Mississippi, southwest Alabama and the western Florida panhandle.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.9996, -88.0926)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1015093. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.