EF2 Tornado — Benton, Tennessee

2020-03-02 · near Liberty, Benton, Tennessee

Event narrative

The tornado started in Benton County northwest of Camden and caused a substantial amount of tree damage along the path the extended into the Tennessee River. Several homes and mobile homes were damaged along the path in Benton County. The most damage, in Benton County, was in the Ballard Road area. Peak winds were estimated around 125 mph. The tornado then moved across the Tennessee River and into Humphreys County.

Wider weather episode

A surface low tracked along a warm front stretched just north of the Mid-South. Meanwhile, a potent upper-level disturbance tracked into the region increasing wind fields and triggering thunderstorms along the warm front and south of the front, in the warm sector, during the late evening hours of March 2, 2020. A couple of supercells tracked across the Missouri Bootheel and northwest Tennessee during the late evening hours. One supercell spawned three tornadoes across Gibson, Carroll, and Benton counties. A few severe storms also developed along a trailing cold front across eastern Arkansas and West Tennessee during the early morning hours of March 3, 2020.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.0928, -88.1189)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 880546. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.