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EF0 tornado in Santa Fe County, New Mexico

Tornado October 12, 2012 · Santa Fe County, New Mexico

EF0
Rating
5.8 mi
Path length
75 yd
Path width
$50K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 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

Numerous large ponderosa pine trees snapped in half. Log cabin under construction received considerable damage with debris lofted into nearby trees.

The wider storm

This day started out active with severe thunderstorms erupting over and east of the south central mountains during the early morning hours on the nose of a weak mid level jet. Precipitation began to form in Arizona ahead of an upper level cut off low coming in off the coast of California. Activity expanded over portions of western and central New Mexico throughout the day as the low shifted east. In addition to the upper level system, a back door cold front had also moved into northeastern New Mexico. Strong to severe thunderstorms developed over the area in this pattern with numerous reports of large hail and damaging winds over northern New Mexico and the eastern plains. A tornado even touched down in the Pecos Wilderness to the north of Pecos.

Began near Glorieta (35.6300, -105.6684).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 410374. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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