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EF0 tornado in Polk County, North Carolina

Tornado October 26, 2010 · Polk County, North Carolina

EF0

Rating

0.5 mi

Path length

40 yd

Path width

$100K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 40 yards (0.02 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

This tornado touched down in the Sandy Plains Rd area just north of White Oak Creek, breaking off the tops of several trees and some large branches. The tornado then skipped east northeast, snapping and uprooting a small but concentrated area of trees in the Coxe Rd area. One large tree fell on a home on Coxe Rd before the tornado lifted.

The wider storm

Scattered supercell thunderstorms developed over the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia as strong wind shear and moderate instability overspread the region ahead of a strong cold front. A number of tornadoes were spawned by the storms. Two strong tornadoes affected the western piedmont and foothills of North Carolina.

Began near Roddy Store (35.2680, -82.0380).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF2 Lincoln County EF2 Catawba County EF0 Rutherford County EF0 Catawba County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 266132. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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