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EF1 tornado in Winston County, Alabama

Tornado April 11, 2013 · Winston County, Alabama

EF1
Rating
0.4 mi
Path length
50 yd
Path width
1
Injury
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 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

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed the damage in Winston County and have determined that the damage was due to an EF-1 tornado, with winds of 100 mph. The brief tornado touched down in a field just southeast of the intersection of County Road 45 and County Road 3734. This location was approximately 3.49 miles east southeast of Addison. The tornado snapped and uprooted several large trees, completely demolished two sheds, and damaged a double wide home where a woman was injured. The woman was injured as she attempted to enter her vehicle and go to a shelter. The tornado continued north northwest where it twisted and rolled an unoccupied mobile home over 50 yards. The tornado snapped several more trees and rolled an unsecured mobile home on Dakota Drive. The tornado lifted just beyond Dakota Drive.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms ahead of and along a cold front moved across Central Alabama on Thursday, April 11th. Storms along the cold front formed into a quasi-linear convective system, causing wind damage and producing seven tornadoes across the area. Ahead of the line, strong daytime heating and increasing instabilities coupled with strong diffluence aloft created prime conditions for discrete thunderstorms to form. These storms caused wind damage across portions of northeast Central Alabama during the late afternoon.

Began near Nesmith (34.1931, -87.1196).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 449842. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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