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EF1 tornado in Choctaw County, Alabama

Tornado April 15, 2011 · Choctaw County, Alabama

EF1
Rating
16.7 mi
Whole path
200 yd
Path width
$40K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Choctaw County → Marengo County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 200 yards (0.11 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

A large tree was blown over onto a manufactured home with 3 persons trapped inside for several minutes approximately 4 miles north-northwest of the community of Ararat. Several trees were blown over or snapped along the tornado path.

The wider storm

Numerous supercell thunderstorms developed in the late morning through the evening hours across Mississippi and Alabama. A series of long track tornadic supercell thunderstorms moved out of southeast Mississippi in the late morning, and crossed southwest Alabama in the late morning through the afternoon and evening hours. In southwest Alabama, the tornadoes missed the larger populated towns and communities, but did produce significant damage to numerous homes in rural areas. Several injuries were reported with 3 fatalities in Deer Park, Alabama (Washington County) from an EF-3 tornado during the early evening hours. Widespread damage to timber along several 200 to 600 yard-wide tornado paths resulted in significant losses to the timber industry. The Alabama Forestry Commission estimated timber losses in southwest Alabama to be near 7.3 million dollars.

Began near Butler (32.0297, -88.2463).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 297473. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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