EF3 Tornado — Elmore, Alabama

2011-04-27 · near Wallsburg, Elmore, Alabama

Event narrative

A tornado touched down in central Elmore County and moved northeast through central Tallapoosa and western Chambers Counties, before it lifted north northwest of Lafayette. The tornado touched down north of Wetumpka, along CR 209 where a few trees were downed and minor home damage were noted. The tornado quickly intensified as it moved northeast through Dexter, where it caused major damage to several homes, outbuildings and farm equipment that was consistent with winds of 130 mph, an EF2. It continued across AL Hwy 9 and damaged several homes. The tornado intensified south of Central to EF3 strength, where it destroyed a mobile home and damaged several single family homes near CR 418. It moved through a mobile home park at the intersection of Middle Road and Auction Barn Road, where it completely destroyed 10 mobile homes and killed 4 people. The tornado continued east to the Mount Hebron Road area. Here, the tornado destroyed several homes, businesses, 2 churches, and an agricultural nursery. The tornado then crossed Lake Martin, just south of the AL Hwy 63 Bridge, doing significant damage to numerous homes around the Windermere area, as its path widened to 0.5 mile. The tornado crossed into Tallapoosa County near Stoney Ridge Rd.

Wider weather episode

A powerful storm system crossed the Southeast United States on Wednesday, April 27, 2011, resulting in a large and deadly tornado outbreak. This epic event broke the record for number of tornadoes in a day for the state of Alabama, becoming the most significant tornado outbreak in the state's history.

Central Alabama had two rounds of severe weather that day. During the early morning hours, a Quasi-Linear Convective System quickly moved across the northern half of the National Weather Service, Birmingham county warning area. Straight line winds of 90 mph (78kts) or greater and 11 tornadoes lead to widespread damage and power outages. During the afternoon, long-lived supercell thunderstorms produced long-track, strong and violent tornadoes. Destruction and loss of life across many towns and communities was devastating.

The hardest hit areas included Shottsville and Hackleburg, both in Marion County, where winds of 160 mph and 210 mph respectively, caused unimagineable damage. Cordova, in Walker County, was hit twice; by a tornado along the Quasi-Linear Convective System during the early morning hours and again in the afternoon by a long-track EF4 tornado. A long track tornado moved across the city of Tuscaloosa and the western suburbs of Birmingham, resulting in the complete destruction of whole neighborhoods and numerous injuries and fatalities in those heavily populated areas. The same parent supercell produced another violent tornado in east Central Alabama as it tracked across St. Clair and Calhoun Counties, resulting in additional fatalities and incredible damage to a number of neighborhoods. Another violent EF4 tornado tracked across portions of Elmore and Tallapoosa Counties, including Lake Martin, destroying numerous homes and a large section of a mobile home park.

Most of the violent tornadoes from this day were captured on video by a number of people, including storm spotters and chasers, as well as numerous television news crews and remotely controlled web-enabled video cameras. This allowed unprecedented coverage and viewing of this historic event in real time from people worldwide.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.6174, -86.1930)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 315331. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.