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EF1 tornado in Le Flore County, Oklahoma

Tornado May 20, 2013 · Le Flore County, Oklahoma

EF1
Rating
8.5 mi
Path length
500 yd
Path width
$5K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 500 yards (0.28 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

This tornado damaged the roof of a home, uprooted several trees, and snapped a number of large tree limbs. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in the tornado was 90 to 100 mph.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms developed along a nearly stationary frontal boundary over central Oklahoma during the early afternoon hours of the 20th. Very unstable air combined with strong low-level and deep-layer shear resulted in long-lived supercells forming over central Oklahoma and moving eastward into eastern Oklahoma. Several tornadoes occurred from these storms across Osage, Washington, and Nowata Counties. The storms organized into bow echos and line segments over eastern Oklahoma, from which several other tornadoes developed during the early evening hours across Ottawa, Adair, and Le Flore Counties. Damaging wind and large hail was also widespread across the region from these storms.

Began near Neff (35.0737, -94.5888).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 455300. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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