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EF0 tornado in Seminole County, Florida

Tornado January 24, 2019 · Seminole County, Florida

EF0

Rating

0.5 mi

Path length

175 yd

Path width

$1.4M

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 175 yards (0.10 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

A NWS damage survey confirmed an EF-0 tornado occurred in Sanford. The tornado developed from a thunderstorm within a broken squall line which advanced rapidly across the central Florida peninsula during the morning. Peak winds were estimated between 75 and 85 mph, along a path of nearly one half mile, with a width of 175 yards. The tornado moved generally northeast beginning near the intersection of Church Street and Monroe Road in Sanford, crossing a lumber yard, SunRail tracks and dissipating within the Central Florida Zoo. Numerous structures in the lumber yard were damaged or destroyed, two (empty) railway cars were overturned, and several trees were uprooted or snapped along the tornado path.

The wider storm

A solid squall line raced across the interior of central Florida during the morning and produced very intense straight line winds in Mascotte-Groveland, damaging several structures. As the line continued east, storms along the line became more scattered and an isolated, short-track tornado affected Sanford. As the line reached the coast, strong winds produced damage to the roof of a home and to a tennis club in Indian Harbour Beach.

Began near Lake Monroe (28.8225, -81.3219).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 795472. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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