EF1 Tornado — Macon, Tennessee

2019-06-21 · near Green Vly, Macon, Tennessee

Event narrative

A short but intense EF-1 tornado touched down in far northern Macon County near Green Valley Road and moved eastward across Oak Knob Road and along Underwood Road before lifting. Hundreds of trees were snapped and uprooted along the path, a few homes were damaged by falling trees, and several barns and outbuildings were damaged. The tornado damage was surrounded by a massive 8 mile long by 1.5 mile wide downburst which also caused scattered severe damage over a much wider area.

Wider weather episode

The most widespread damaging wind event to affect Middle Tennessee in at least 15 years struck the area during the evening hours on Friday, June 21, 2019. A long line of severe thunderstorms known as a MCS (mesoscale convective system) formed across southeast Missouri during the day, then moved southeast across Middle Tennessee between 6-10pm. With ample instability and unusually strong wind shear for late June in place, these storms produced widespread damaging winds in every Middle Tennessee county. Thousands of trees were blown down across the region, including some that had been standing since the Civil War. Damage to power lines and poles resulted in an estimated 100,000+ power outages, with some people without electricity for up to 1 week. In addition to the damaging winds, large hail up to quarter size was reported, and several mesocyclones within the line of storms spawned 4 tornadoes and several funnel clouds. Due to the long path and severity of the wind damage with this MCS, the Storm Prediction Center classified this event as a derecho.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.6170, -86.0216)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 841535. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.