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EF0 tornado in Lincoln County, North Carolina

Tornado April 19, 2019 · Lincoln County, North Carolina

EF0
Rating
7.1 mi
Whole path
100 yd
Path width
1
Injury
$10K
Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 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

NWS storm survey determined that a weak tornado that touched down in northern Gaston County crossed into Lincoln County near Landers Church Rd. The tornado tracked north/northeast, blowing down numerous trees and large limbs, including through the south side of Linconton and the east side of the downtown area before lifting near Highway 155 on the north side of town.

The wider storm

A large area of moderate to heavy rain showers, along with embedded clusters of strong to severe thunderstorms moved slowly across western North Carolina throughout the morning and into the afternoon of the 19th ahead of a slow-moving cold front. Some of the storms produced a couple of isolated, weak tornadoes and locally damaging winds. However, the larger impact was from flash flooding resulting from a swath of 4 to 7 inches of rain that fell across portions of the mountains.

Began near Laboratory (35.4140, -81.2790).

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 821258. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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