EF1 tornado in Gadsden County, Florida

This EF-1 tornado touched down just west of Pat Thomas Highway, FL Route 267, and just north of Cox Lane. The tornado flipped a single-wide mobile home upside down. On the opposite side of the highway, a couple of large pine trees snapped, one of which crashed through the roof of a home narrowly crushing a couple that were in bed at the time. Fortunately, no one was injured. The tornado continued east southeast roughly paralleling the CSX tracks. An aerial survey showed trees snapped along the route. Ground surveys showed damage to homes along Jim Williams road. The tornado reached its greatest strength at this point, snapping a few small utility poles, removing about half the roof of one home and damaging a couple of others. The tornado lifted just beyond the end of this road. Damage cost was estimated.

This event featured all modes of severe weather in our forecast area, including 13 tornadoes, numerous reports of straight-line wind damage, and even large hail. The 13 tornadoes consisted of 1 EF3, 2 EF2s, 6 EF1s, and 4 EF0s. This is a very high number of tornadoes for our forecast area for a single event. This compares with 7 tornadoes in the 1/22/17 event, 8 tornadoes in the 1/2/17 event, and 10 tornadoes in the 3/1/07 event. This may have been the most tornadoes for a single event in our area since the Hurricane Ivan tornadoes back in 2004. The synoptic pattern was characterized by a fast-moving upper trough through relatively zonal flow. The forecast area was under the favorable right entrance region of the upper jet with lots of upper level divergence. An 850 mb jet near or in excess of 50 knots was also present, which is another typical ingredient for severe weather in this part of the country in the cool season. Cool season levels of shear (0-1 km shear > 30 knots and 0-6 km shear > 50 knots) were overlaid with moderate levels of instability (SBCAPE 1500 j/kg), as opposed to more typical winter SBCAPE < 500 j/kg. Without this strong low-level jet, the low-level shear values would have been weaker and we would have probably seen less tornadoes.