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EF3 tornado in Blount County, Tennessee

Tornado March 23, 2011 · Blount County, Tennessee

EF3

Rating

5.8 mi

Path length

500 yd

Path width

Injuries

$2.5M

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 500 yards (0.28 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF3 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF3 is severe damage: whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, consistent with estimated gusts of 136–165 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-3 tornado produced 140 mph winds along a 5.8 mile path with a maximum damage path width of 500 yards. Twenty six homes sustained damage ranging from fifty percent to entirely demolished as a result of the tornado.

The wider storm

Severe convection developed ahead of a cold front during the late afternoon through the late evening hours in an atmosphere characterized by high shear with a 40 to 50 knot low level jet and a 120 knot upper level jet but only weak to moderate instability. The result was the tornado which produced EF-3 damage at Greenback and in the southern portion of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Eastern Tennessee.

Began near Kiser (35.6596, -84.2322).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 282100. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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