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EF0 tornado in Glenn County, California

Tornado January 24, 2009 · Glenn County, California

EF0
Rating
0.1 mi
Path length
40 yd
Path width
$100K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

NOAA recorded where this tornado touched down but not where it lifted, so it appears as a point. 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

A California Highway Patrol officer observed a funnel cloud form in a wall cloud and drop down on a farm around 3:00 pm PST. The tornado ripped most of the tin roof panels off of a 70 year old barn and also from a chicken coop. Roof pieces were found in a tree and in adjacent fields up to one half of a mile away. One tin roof piece shorted out power lines, causing a loss of power to the neighborhood. A pickup truck suffered damage to the driver side mirror from flying debris. Netting from pheasant pens was ripped up. A large steel hopper was knocked over. The farmhouse was undamaged and the farm animals were apparently unharmed.

The tornado was non-supercellular and formed when a line of eastward moving thunderstorms ahead of a cold front collided with a westward moving thunderstorm. Neighbors 2 miles away in Princeton took photos of the tornado touching down in a burned rice field briefly before it went aloft and then dropped down on the barn. The tornado was reported to have touched down again just across the street in a field, dropping panels from the barn roof. Another funnel cloud was also reported which did not touch down.

The wider storm

A short lived tornado briefly touched down on a farm in the central Sacramento Valley. This tornado badly damaged a barn and a chicken coop. No injuries occurred.

Began near Codora (39.3602, -122.0406).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 146881. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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