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EF0 tornado in Allegan County, Michigan

Tornado April 26, 2011 · Allegan County, Michigan

EF0

Rating

3.3 mi

Path length

50 yd

Path width

$1.0M

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 50 yards (0.03 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

The tornado touchdown at a landscaping company where it tore a small section of roof of a warehouse building, knocked over several trailers, and blew the windows out of several cars. The tornado then struck a row of 100 yard long turkey pole barns. An approximately 100 ft section of one barn was uplifted and the collapsed. The roof was torn off about a 50 ft section of another barn. Further northeast, several small outbuildings were destroyed and trees were uprooted. Several houses in the path received minor roof and soffit damage with two garage doors damaged. The tornado lifted after partially destroying a 75 year-old 40 ft by 90 ft barn.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms developed during the late afternoon and evening hours of April 26 as an upper level trough and cold front approached our region. Several low topped supercells developed and produced numerous reports of large hail up to around two inches in diameter. In addition a damage survey team from the NWS Grand Rapids office determined that damage caused near Burnips in Allegan County was due to an EF-0 tornado with top winds near 85 mph that damaged buildings at the Deboer Turkey Farm and trailers around the area. In Portage, nine people were injured by a lightning strike.

Began near Burnips (42.7384, -85.8338).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 289628. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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