EF1 tornado in Fentress County, Tennessee

An EF-1 tornado touched down in the Armathwaite community west of Brannon Lane and moved east across Stockton Road, Mt Helen Road, HM Brooks Road, Chestnut Ridge Road, and Sam Smith Road before lifting. A few barns and outbuildings were damaged and hundreds of large trees were snapped and uprooted along the path, with the worst damage along Sam Smith Road where a home narrowly missed being crushed by numerous trees. The tornado path may have been longer to the east but that area is not accessible by roads.

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.