EF3 Tornado — Polk, Tennessee

2016-11-30 · near Ocoee, Polk, Tennessee

Event narrative

The tornado formed south of Ocoee with several large trees snapped. It strengthened to an EF-2 and moved north northeast and collapsed a cell phone tower. It quickly increased to an EF-3 and heavily damaged a post office. Several more buildings were heavily damaged along with some manufactured homes. Two fatalities occurred in the manufactured housing. Twenty other people were injured in this area. The tornado weakened to an EF-0 as it moved northeast towards Benton. It snapped off the tops of a few pine trees.

Wider weather episode

A strong upper level system moved through the Eastern United States late Tuesday into early Wednesday. The associated surface low pressure system pressed north northeast from the Lower Mississippi across the Mid South on its way across the Lower Ohio Valley. While there were reports of damaging straight line wind with some of the thunderstorms generated ahead of the system cold front, the main and concentrated areas of damage were associated with tornadic supercell thunderstorms. The supercell storms developed in an area of strong shear and sufficient; albeit weak instability. Tornadoes formed in a zone favorable to rotating thunderstorm updrafts just north of a warm frontal boundary across the Tennessee Valley of Alabama northeast through Southeast Tennessee. Three tornadoes developed during the early morning hours on Wednesday, November 30th; impacting McMinn, Polk, Marion, and Sequatchie counties.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (35.1109, -84.7264)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 662323. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.