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EF1 tornado in Riverside County, California

Tornado August 6, 2015 · Riverside County, California

EF1
Rating
4.0 mi
Path length
900 yd
Path width
2
Injuries
$18.0M
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 900 yards (0.51 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

The damage was west of Highway 111 between 64th and 66th Avenues, paralleling Highway 86 towards the mountains, or approximately 3 1/2 miles. An emergency manager for the Imperial irrigation water district (IID) reported a total of 140 poles damaged, 30 of which were steel.

The wider storm

Monsoon moisture and some instability from an easterly wave resulted in scattered thunderstorms over the mountains and lower deserts. Most notable of these was a severe thunderstorm that occurred near Mecca in the southern Coachella Valley during the evening. This storm produced a copious amount of lightning and very strong, damaging winds (over 100 power poles damaged or destroyed). While the precipitation did not hit many gages, the Kent Sea Farms gage, near Mecca, recorded 0.32 inches of rain with this storm. After storm damage surveys, it was concluded that the most likely cause of the damage was a brief, nearly-stationary, EF1 tornado.

Began near Mecca (33.5646, -116.1083).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 599391. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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