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EF1 tornado in Lauderdale County, Alabama

Tornado April 5, 2025 · Lauderdale County, Alabama

EF1
Rating
34.6 mi
Whole path
280 yd
Path width
5
Injuries
$6.8M
Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 280 yards (0.16 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

A tornado crossed Wilson Lake from Colbert County and moved into the Aqua Vista community with several trees uprooted and large limbs snapped. The tornado tracked to the east-northeast. Drone imagery courtesy of Lauderdale County EMA supplemented the ground survey for areas inaccessible by roads. With this data, it was determined that the tornado then tracked north of County Road 31 where several more trees were uprooted before impacting a neighborhood off of Bull Run road. There, several houses were missing shingles and large portions of fencing. Outdoor sheds had a collapse of most walls and tree damage was also present. The tornado then crossed County Road 33, snapping and uprooting more hardwood trees, and then crossed U.S. Highway 72 just southeast of Elgin, AL. Drone imagery indicated areas of trees uprooted or with large areas of limbs snapped as the tornado crossed Second Creek before lifting just south of Toonersville, where damage to the tree canopy was noted.

The wider storm

A line of severe thunderstorms roared east-northeast through north Alabama during the evening of the 5th into the early morning hours of the 6th. The line produced four tornadoes in north Alabama and several reports of wind damage, particularly in northwest Alabama. Also, flash flooding resulted in multiple water rescues including 10 hikers in Bankhead National Forest, a woman and two childeren swept off of a road in Lawrence County, and a woman in Cullman County.

Began near Wilson Lake (34.8230, -87.5080).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

2 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1259206. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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