EF0 tornado in Bladen County, North Carolina

Tornado September 27, 2024 · Bladen County, North Carolina

EF0

Rating

11.3 mi

Whole path

30 yd

Path width

$50K

Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 30 yards (0.02 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

The tornado touched down on the east side of Mote Road where several pine trees were snapped. It tracked north-northeast and snapped several pine trees along Smiths Mill Pond Road. Additional snapped pines were noted as the tornado crossed Highway 701 near Smith Mill Pond Road across from Gaddie Norris Drive. It continued moving north to Peter Cromartie Road where a large limbs and several smaller limbs were broken out of a large oak tree.

This is a separate tornado from one that developed about one mile to the west around the time this tornado dissipated and crossed the Bladen-Sampson county line at Helltown Road Details on that tornado can be fund in a Public Information Statement issued by NWS Raleigh.

The wider storm

Hurricane Helene made landfall along the Gulf Coast of FL in the Big Bend and weakened to a tropical storm before reaching central GA. The storm then turned northwest across the southern Appalachians before weakening to a tropical depression over eastern TN. Tropical Storm Warnings were issued for all of northeast SC but not in NC. Limited impacts occurred across southeast NC including some tropical storm force wind gusts and some a weak tornado.

Began near White Lake (34.6864, -78.4478).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1212022. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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