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EF1 tornado in Lee County, Virginia

Tornado March 2, 2012 · Lee County, Virginia

EF1

Rating

0.8 mi

Path length

100 yd

Path width

$100K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 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

The EF1 tornado with maximum winds of 95 mph produced a damage path about 100 yards wide. The tornado occurred about three miles southeast of Jonesville, along the banks of the Powell River. A mobile home was pulled fifteen feet off its foundation and heavily damaged. Also, a camper was rolled 40 feet and several outbuildings were either heavily damaged or destroyed.

The wider storm

A deepening low pressure system moved northeast from the Mid Mississippi Valley through the Great Lakes initially driving a warm front northward through the Southern Appalachian region during the afternoon. The associated cold front swept across the area late Friday night. A one hundred knot upper level jet positioned over a 50 knot low level jet resulted in a strongly sheared environment. The intense shear and moderate instability produced an atmosphere conducive to long-lived, discrete, supercell thunderstorms. A total of 3 tornadoes, ranging in intensity from EF-0 to EF-1, produced damage and one injury to a resident in the path of the storms in Southwest Virginia.

Began near Mc Connels (36.6759, -83.0574).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

EF1 Lee County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 365154. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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