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EF0 tornado in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama

Tornado January 22, 2017 · Tuscaloosa County, Alabama

EF0
Rating
0.3 mi
Path length
200 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 200 yards (0.11 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

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in southeast Tuscaloosa County and determined that the damage was consistent with an EF0 tornado, with maximum sustained winds near 80 mph. The tornado touched down along Hagler Coaling Road, about .60 mile north of Highway 82, uprooting several dozen trees. The tornado tracked northeast, downing a tree onto a home, before lifting on the northeast side of a small pond.

The wider storm

After over a week of near-record to record high temperatures, several upper-level disturbances followed by a strong upper-level low pressure system produced multiple rounds of severe weather across Central Alabama. This system was characterized by strong upper-level winds and very cold upper-level temperatures. The first round produced one brief, weak tornado in St. Clair County on the evening of January 19. The second round occurred on the morning of January 20 with 12 tornadoes across Marengo, Elmore, Macon, Lee, Pike, and Barbour Counties. A third round produced damaging straight line winds on the night of January 21, including in the Birmingham metro area where the Birmingham airport measured a 75 mph wind gust and in Oneonta where 80 mph straight-line winds caused significant damage. A brief tornado also occurred in Tuscaloosa County with this activity. Finally, a fourth round moved through during the day on January 22 with 3 tornadoes across Bullock and Lee Counties.

Began near Hagler (33.0439, -87.3412).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 676460. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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