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EF1 tornado in Lawrence County, Alabama

Tornado April 19, 2009 · Lawrence County, Alabama

EF1
Rating
4.4 mi
Path length
67 yd
Path width
$30K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 67 yards (0.04 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 caused complete roof loss and significant structural damage to a concrete industrial facility along Highway 157. This facility was located 2 miles southeast of Moulton. Additional damage occurred along CR 99 and 100 between Wren and Moulton, where multiple trees were snapped and uprooted. Estimated peak wind speed with this tornado was 100 mph.

The wider storm

A strong low pressure system tracking northeast from the southern Ozarks into the Ohio Valley brought a cold front into the central Tennessee Valley during the late afternoon and evening hours of the 19th. Supercells erupted across northern Mississippi, moving into far northwest Alabama shortly before 5 pm CDT. Initially, these storms were large hail producers, with up to baseball sized hail reported in the town of Red Bay in Franklin County. As the early evening progressed, this supercell tracked into Lawrence and Morgan Counties producing wind damage and at least six tornadoes as it moved east. A male individual was killed in the town of Priceville in Morgan County when a tree was knocked down onto his trailer home. The thunderstorms evolved into a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) as they moved into Marshall and DeKalb Counties. Another tornado developed rapidly in the community of Asbury in Marshall County, killing one and critically injurying another when their mobile home was destroyed. The QLCS progressed into DeKalb County producing additional tornado damage.

Began near Wren (34.4382, -87.3236).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 159797. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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