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EF0 tornado in Pike County, Alabama

Tornado March 31, 2020 · Pike County, Alabama

EF0
Rating
0.1 mi
Path length
80 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 80 yards (0.05 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

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in northwest Pike County and determined that it was consistent with an EF0 tornado, with maximum winds near 70 mph. Damage was limited to a few snapped and uprooted pine trees along its path. A tornado debris signature was noted with this storm.

The wider storm

A strong upper level disturbance caused a wave of low pressure to form along a quasi-stationary front and move eastward along the Highway 80 and Interstate 85 corridors. This allowed a warm front to lift northward across the southeast portions of Central Alabama. North of the warm front, a line of showers with sporadic lightning strikes along an inverted trough was able to produce damaging winds despite a cool and stable air mass at the surface, knocking down numerous trees from Tuscaloosa County to Randolph County during the first part of the morning. A QLCS ahead of the cold front moved eastward later in the morning from Lowndes County to Barbour County, producing sporadic damaging winds. Additionally, bookend vortices and embedded supercell structures several weak tornadoes and one strong tornado.

Began near Orion (31.9371, -86.0665).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

4 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 882672. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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