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EF0 tornado in Newport County, Rhode Island

Tornado October 2, 2019 · Newport County, Rhode Island

EF0

Rating

0.2 mi

Path length

60 yd

Path width

$5K

Damage as recorded

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The path drawn at its surveyed width of 60 yards (0.03 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

A small EF-0 tornado produced damage in Portsmouth, RI and lasted for only

about one minute. Most of the damage was concentrated in the area from

Prospect Farm Road to Sea Meadow Drive.

The damage consisted of a few uprooted and snapped trees but there was also

damage to the wall of a garage that was bowed out when the wind entered the

garage through an open garage door. Eyewitnesses reported lawn furniture and

tree limbs lofted into the air which were thrown several hundred feet away.

This was also the area where several videos showed a funnel touching down.

Sporadic straight-line wind damage occurred for a half mile farther south

on Ethel Drive, Fairview Lane, and Sherwood Drive where there were a few

downed trees and large tree limbs.

The tornado formed at the collision of two boundaries, one which came in

from the north and the other which came in from the east.

The wider storm

A cold front pushed southward through the region into warm, moist air mass, which formed an isolated weak tornado in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The tornado formed at the collision of two boundaries, one which came in from the north and the other which came in from the east.

Began near Quonset Pt Nas (41.5915, -71.2481).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 855241. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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