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EF1 tornado in Fairfield County, South Carolina

Tornado December 29, 2024 · Fairfield County, South Carolina

EF1
Rating
8.0 mi
Whole path
250 yd
Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Fairfield County → Fairfield 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

An EF-1 tornado with peak winds of 95 mph began just north of a manufacturing plant on Highway 321 and Guardian Way where it overturned four empty trailers and snapped multiple utility poles. The tornado moved east across Highway 321, where it collapsed a large garage door on the east side of a food plant then snapped numerous trees along Industrial Park Rd. The tornado moved across Highway 34E, snapping several trees and power poles near a medical manufacturer, before moving through an inaccessible wooded area and eventually crossing Horse Creek Rd and dissipating.

The wider storm

A deep upper trough and an associated surface prefrontal trough translated from the Deep South into the Southeast during the morning hours. A long-lived QLCS containing strong to severe storms propagated along with the prefrontal trough, likely cold-pool dominated. This QLCS produced multiple reports of wind damage as well as multiple confirmed tornadoes.

Began near Rockton (34.3341, -81.0875).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1221825. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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