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EF0 tornado in St. Clair County, Alabama

Tornado April 28, 2014 · St. Clair County, Alabama

EF0
Rating
14.6 mi
Whole path
500 yd
Path width
2
Injuries

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through St. Clair County → Blount County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

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 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

The tornado touched down just north of Mountain View Lane in extreme northwestern St. Clair County, just south of the Blount County line. Damage was minor at the beginning of the tornado and limited to trees. The tornado continued northeast crossing into Blount County.

The wider storm

A large scale severe weather event began Saturday, April 26 and ended Wednesday, April 30th, producing several waves of severe weather from the Central Plains eastward through the Deep South, and across a significant portion of the eastern United States. Strong and violent tornadoes, very large hail, flash flooding, and damaging straight line winds accompanied this dynamic storm system. The most tornadoes occurred across the Deep South as the system moved into Mississippi and Alabama on Monday, April 28th. Supercell thunderstorms developed during the afternoon over eastern Mississippi and northwest Alabama in the warm sector well ahead of a cold front. The activity slowly spread east and southeast overnight, with this wave of severe storms ending early Tuesday morning. Storms redeveloped late Tuesday afternoon and moved into Central Alabama. A large area of rainfall across the northern Gulf Coast limited the amount of instability across the area, and storms remained below severe limits. The last wave of severe weather occurred early Wednesday morning across the south as an isolated storm produced large hail, as the system finally pulled east of the area.

Began near Springville (33.7993, -86.5395).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 523225. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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