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EF1 tornado in Sequoyah County, Oklahoma

Tornado November 30, 2018 · Sequoyah County, Oklahoma

EF1
Rating
7.1 mi
Whole path
400 yd
Path width
$45K
Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 400 yards (0.23 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

This is the second segment of a two segment tornado. The tornado crossed the Arkansas River, moving into Sequoyah County, and uprooted trees as it crossed I-40. It continued to move northeast, crossing Highway 64 to the east of Gore where trees were snapped and a home was damaged. The tornado then dissipated over open country south of the E1000 Road. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in this segment of the tornado was 95 to 105 mph.

The wider storm

A strong low pressure trough translated from the southwestern United States into the Southern Plains on November 30th and December 1st. Warm and moist air had spread northward into eastern Oklahoma ahead of this system. Atmospheric instability became moderately strong during the afternoon and evening hours to the east of a cold front that was over western Oklahoma and south of a stationary front that was located across northern Oklahoma into southern Missouri. As the strong storm system moved into the Southern Plains on the 30th, wind fields throughout the atmosphere increased substantially, which resulted in very strong deep-layer and low-level wind shear across eastern Oklahoma during the evening and overnight hours.

Thunderstorms developed during the evening hours of the 30th across central and eastern Oklahoma. Moderately strong atmospheric instability across the area combined with very strong wind shear to produce organized severe thunderstorms, including supercells. Supercell thunderstorms produced several tornadoes and damaging thunderstorm wind gusts across eastern Oklahoma. One of the tornadoes was strong and exceptionally long-tracked, affecting Sequoyah, Cherokee, Adair, and Delaware Counties. A squall line moved rapidly across the area ahead of the surging cold front and produced additional tornadoes and damaging wind gusts.

Began near Gore (35.4816, -95.0932).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 791661. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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