EF0 tornado in Alexander County, North Carolina

Tornado April 19, 2019 · Alexander County, North Carolina

EF0

Rating

0.5 mi

Path length

75 yd

Path width

$5K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 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 confirmed a short tornado track that began along Rock Pond Ln, where the metal roof was peeled off a barn and lofted some distance. Otherwise, damage was limited to downed trees and limbs as the tornado moved northeast before lifting shortly after crossing Berea Church Quincy Rd.

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 Smiths Store (35.9490, -81.0590).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF0 McDowell County EF0 Lincoln County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 821264. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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