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EF1 tornado in Catawba County, North Carolina

Tornado January 9, 2024 · Catawba County, North Carolina

EF1
Rating
9.0 mi
Whole path
250 yd
Path width
1
Death
4
Injuries
$250K
Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 250 yards (0.14 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

NWS storm survey found the path of a tornado that touched down near Yount Rd in Claremont, where large tree branches were broken off, before the tornado moved northeast, uprooting trees from Love Rd to Boggs Rd. The tornado appeared to intensify by along Hewitt Rd near McLin Creek, before moving into the Fox Hollow neighborhood. Several trees were uprooted or snapped on Cindi Lane, while several manufactured homes were damaged along Evening Dr. One of these homes, which was tied down but only in shallow holes, rolled over and was partially torn apart. A person inside was killed. The walls of another manufactured home in Fox Hollow were torn away from the floor and undercarriage, and two more suffered major roof or wall damage. Four injuries occurred elsewhere in Fox Hollow, two of which were serious. Several tree trunks were snapped northeast of this location on Old Catawba Rd. At this point, the damage track was lost in a largely inaccessible rural area between Highway 70 and the Catawba River, but the tornado is presumed to have been mostly in contact with the ground, crossing into Iredell County just south of I-40.

The wider storm

A major/complex frontal system brought widespread rain with embedded thunderstorms to western North Carolina, mainly during the afternoon of the 9th. Widespread rainfall amounts of 3 to 5 inches (with locally higher amounts) in around 12 hours resulted in numerous reports of flooding. Isolated severe thunderstorms also resulted in a number of damaging wind gusts reports over the Piedmont, along with an EF1 tornado that impacted portions of Catawba and Iredell Counties.

Began near Bandy (35.6570, -81.1570).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1159053. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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