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EF0 tornado in Amherst County, Virginia

Tornado April 15, 2018 · Amherst County, Virginia

EF0
Rating
1.5 mi
Path length
75 yd
Path width
$50K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 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

At 6:38 PM EST, a weak tornado touched down on the north side of Piney Mountain and just west of Indian Creek Road in a forested area about three miles west-northwest of Lowesville. It tracked toward the northwest and lifted at 6:41 PM EST about four miles west-northwest of Lowesville. The tornado only uprooted trees during its time on the ground.

The wider storm

A strong cold front with a negatively-tilted upper level trough approached southwest Virginia. Plenty of wind shear with modest instability made conditions ripe for large hail, damaging winds, and tornadoes. The thunderstorms ahead of the cold front became strong enough to produce six tornadoes across portions of southwest Virginia. While the first tornado originally formed in Caswell County of North Carolina and crossed into Virginia, the other five all touched down in Virginia. These tornadoes caused significant damage within the cities of Danville and Lynchburg and within the town of Elon in Amherst County. It is the first time ever since storm data records began in 1950 that a tornado struck inside the city limits of Lynchburg.

Began near Lowesville (37.7240, -79.1230).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF3 Campbell CountyEF1 Caswell CountyEF1 Craig CountyEF1 Bedford CountyEF1 Campbell County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 748623. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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