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EF0 tornado in Montgomery County, Maryland

Tornado April 22, 2023 · Montgomery County, Maryland

EF0
Rating
0.4 mi
Path length
50 yd
Path width
$30K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 50 yards (0.03 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 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

On Saturday afternoon at 1:58 PM EDT, an EF-0 tornado touched down in Poolesville, MD. This tornado was brief, only being on the ground until 1:59 PM EDT. It had estimated 75 MPH winds with a path length of 0.4 miles and path width approximately 50 yards.

Damage was sporadic along its path. The first evidence of damage was near the intersection of Fisher Avenue and Spates Hill Road, where a residence in the 17000 block of Spates Hill Road had three cedar trees blown down in a unidirectional orientation. This was likely the rear flank downdraft of the storm that initiated the formation of the tornado..

The first evidence of tornadic damage was in the 17100 block of Campbell Farm Road. Here, several single family home residences suffered tree damage, with downed and snapped trees, along with an air conditioning unit and a temporary metal trailer moved from their foundations.

The tornado briefly lifted before producing damage to trees near the intersection of Wootton Avenue and Hempstone Court. Here, large limbs of trees were snapped in different directions, along with trees being uprooted in a direction opposite of the storm motion.

The tornado briefly lifted, before touching down again for the final time at the interface between the western portion of L.M. Stevens Park and the backyards of several single family homes along the 19100 block of Dowden Circle. Here, there were two softwood trees uprooted falling to the northwest, with another softwood tree snapped. One utility shed was damaged by a tree that fell onto it. One home incurred damage with a large limb that blew onto the deck. A wooden fence was blown over to the northwest. Leaf debris was observed on all four sides of one of the residences. An apple tree was snapped, with the losse top coming to rest towards the east, which was the opposite direction of other damage in that immediate area.

The wider storm

A strong cold front produced a line of thunderstorms that resulted in widely scattered damaging straight-line wind gusts and a couple tornadoes.

Began near Poolesville (39.1355, -77.4009).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

EF0 Baltimore County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1085188. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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