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EF0 tornado in Jackson County, Alabama

Tornado May 25, 2025 · Jackson County, Alabama

EF0
Rating
8.1 mi
Path length
140 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 140 yards (0.08 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 initial damage was observed in the Cave Springs area near County Road (CR) 54, where large tree branches were downed as the tornado tracked east-southeast. Additional indicators of tree damage were found near the intersection of CR 53 and CR 147. The tornado then progressed along Highway 117 into Stevenson, where trees were observed to be uprooted or had large branches broken. As the primary damage indicators were related to trees, and considering the above-average rainfall experienced in May, the estimated wind speeds were slightly reduced to account for highly saturated ground conditions.

The wider storm

An upper level disturbance moving east into northern Alabama and southern middle Tennessee (north of a slow moving frontal boundary edge north from central Alabama) interacted with an unstable atmosphere during the early to mid afternoon hours to produce a line of strong to severe thunderstorms that exited in Georgia between 6 and 7 PM. This line of storms produced damaging winds in portions of northern Alabama and a tornado in the Cave Springs area of Jackson county.

An additional line of strong to severe thunderstorms developed as the frontal boundary moved north into northern Alabama later in the evening before exiting the area after midnight. This line of storms produced sporadic damaging winds, particularly in Lawrence county and a few instances of large hail. Some aerial flooding occurred as well in portions of DeKalb county.

Began near Olalee (34.9084, -85.9670).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1276634. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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