EF1 Tornado — Franklin, Tennessee

2025-05-25 · near Awalt, Franklin, Tennessee

Event narrative

A tornado touched down just east of the Bluegill Grill and Marina, producing sporadic tree damage between Holiday Drive and Awalt Road. At this location, the tornado was approximately 100 yards wide, snapping and uprooting several hardwood trees. From here, the tornado continued to the east-southeast, producing sporadic tree damage on Rock Creek Road and again just after crossing Highway 41A. Several hardwood and softwood trees were snapped and uprooted on Taylor Road. Sporadic tree damage continued north and east of Estill Springs, with several areas of large branches downed along the path. The tornado dissipated east of Hwy 41A.

Wider weather episode

An upper level disturbance moving east into southern middle Tennessee (north of a slow moving frontal boundary edge north from central Alabama) interacted with an unstable atmosphere in the mid-afternoon hours to produce a line of strong to severe thunderstorms that pushed east into eastern Tennessee between 6 and 7 PM. This line of storms produced damaging winds across a good portion of southern middle Tennessee, particularly in northern portions of Lincoln, Moore and NW Franklin counties. In addition, a brief QLCS tornado occurred as well in Franklin county, TN.

This area was worked over by this initial convection enough to keep additional severe weather from occurring with a second line of thunderstorms that developed further south later that evening.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (35.2744, -86.2358)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1276635. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.