TornadoLookup

Home / Alabama / Sumter

EF0 tornado in Sumter County, Alabama

Tornado January 23, 2012 · Sumter County, Alabama

EF0
Rating
1.1 mi
Path length
50 yd
Path width
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

A tornado, with winds of 75 MPH, touched down along Highway 11 about 5 miles northeast of Livingston, snapping and uprooting a few small soft and hardwood trees. The tornado then traveled northeast toward County Road 39 and McCainville Road, where additional trees were damaged, along with minor damage to an outbuilding. The tornado lifted along McCainville Road.

The wider storm

An upper level low pressure system developed over the Great Plains and moved east across the Ohio River Valley, dragging a cold front through the lower Mississippi River Valley. As the cold front moved through Arkansas, a squall line formed, producing severe thunderstorms to areas west of Alabama. As the cold front progressed eastward, individual supercells developed in advance of the front and moved through Alabama during the early morning hours on January 23rd. Several long track supercells produced strong, long track tornadoes.

Began near Parker (32.6567, -88.1705).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 363567. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

Tornadoes near your address

See every tornado that passed near a place you know, measured to its path.