EF1 tornado in Claiborne County, Tennessee
Tornado March 2, 2012 · Claiborne County, Tennessee
NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Claiborne County → Lee County, Virginia; the totals above are for the whole tornado.
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 the National Weather Service wrote
This tornado formed in Claiborne County, TN, then moved northeast into Lee County, VA. In Claiborne County, the tornado was rated as EF1 with maximum winds of 90 mph. It damaged 5 homes, with one home receiving major damage. It also downed numerous trees.
The combined tornado path for Claiborne and Lee Counties extended 4.9 miles.
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 9 tornadoes ranging in intensity from EF-0 to EF-3 produced widespread damage and nearly 50 injuries to East Tennessee residents in the path of the storms.
Began near Union (36.5815, -83.5322).
Other tornadoes from the same storm system
8 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.
Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 373771. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.
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