EF2 tornado in Gaston County, North Carolina

Tornado May 9, 2008 · Gaston County, North Carolina

EF2

Rating

18.2 mi

Whole path

75 yd

Path width

$7.0M

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Gaston County → Mecklenburg County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

A tornado track began just southeast of Gastonia and continued well into Mecklenburg County on the northwest side of Charlotte. Where the tornado first touched down, part of the roof was blown off the roof of an office building near the intersection of Union Rd and Garrison Bvd. The tornado continued east-northeast to the Garrison Blvd, S New Hope Rd area, where numerous homes and businesses received minor to moderate roof damage and numerous large trees were uprooted. The tornado produced sporadic, mainly minor damage as it moved through McAdenville, where it crossed I-85, blowing several cars off the interstate. The most significant damage was observed in the Catawba Heights/ Belmont area, near I-85, where much of the metal roof was peeled from a large wharehouse, causing 7 million dollars in damage. Another industrial business in this area lost most of its roof.

The wider storm

A mini-supercell thunderstorms produced a tornado with a nearly 20 mile path through the Gastonia and Charlotte metro areas during the early morning hours of May 9th.

Began near Gastonia (35.2535, -81.1765).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 102656. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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