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EF1 tornado in Dale County, Alabama

Tornado March 1, 2007 · Dale County, Alabama

EF1

Rating

37.0 mi

Whole path

150 yd

Path width

Injuries

$13.8M

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Dale County → Henry County → Clay County, Georgia; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 150 yards (0.09 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

The tornado touched down southwest of the community of Echo and traveled northeast along State Road 27 before it crossed into western Henry County. The damage assessment indicated that the EF-1 tornado damaged 24 mobile homes and destroyed five others. Four residents of a mobile home were injured when the tornado damaged their mobile home. The tornado also demolished 18 chicken houses, which killed 140,000 chickens. The tornado's path missed the Ft Rucker, Alabama WSR-88D RDA site by less than a quarter mile. Numerous trees and utility poles were snapped. Dale County was declared a federal disaster area.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms developed ahead of a warm front over the Florida Panhandle and moved northeast across southeast Alabama and into extreme southwest Georgia during the afternoon hours of March 1. The strongest tornado, classified an EF-4, killed nine and injured 50 in Enterprise, Alabama.

Began near Echo (31.4493, -85.5060).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

EF4 Coffee County 9 dead

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 22786. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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