EF1 tornado in Washington County, Florida

An EF-1 tornado touched down about 5 miles to the west of Alford, FL in Washington County. It proceeded northeast with multiple structures damaged throughout Washington County, mostly uplift of tin roofing material. Many freshly snapped trees were also seen in Washington County. At one residence, all of the tin roofing material was thrown across the street into the neighbors yard as all as a completely shredded trampoline, a dog pin that was 100 feet to the northeast and a collapsed garage door. The highest degree of damage was at a house near the county border with Jackson County where much of the tin was ripped from the roof, a small barn tumbled about 50 feet to the northeast as well as a metal canopy moving about 75 feet to the northeast. The tornado continued to move into Jackson County, FL and lifting about 1.5 miles north of Alford, FL. In Jackson County, the main damage was also to the tin roofing material with at least one double wide seeing all of the wood, shingles and tin removed from a quarter of the house. At another residence, a small outbuilding was lifted, flipped over and landed up against the house, completely destroyed. A few snapped and uprooted trees were also noted in Jackson county. 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.