EF1 tornado — Cherokee County, Oklahoma

EF1 tornado in Cherokee County, Oklahoma

Tornado January 10, 2020 · Cherokee County, Oklahoma

EF1

Rating

5.8 mi

Path length

250 yd

Path width

$50K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 250 yards (0.14 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

This tornado damaged the roof of a permanent home and the roofs of two mobile homes, uprooted a number of trees, and damaged outbuildings. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in the tornado was 90 to 100 mph.

The wider storm

A strong storm system and associated cold front moved into the Southern Plains on the 10th. Unseasonably warm and moist air spread northward from the Gulf of Mexico ahead of this system, resulting in weak to moderate instability developing across eastern Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas. This instability, combined with very strong wind fields and wind shear, resulted in organized severe thunderstorms. The strongest storms produced large hail up to golfball size, damaging wind, a tornado, and flash flooding.

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 867121. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

EF1 tornado in Cherokee County, Oklahoma

What the National Weather Service wrote

The wider storm

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

Tornadoes near your address