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EF0 tornado in Sumter County, South Carolina

Tornado September 17, 2020 · Sumter County, South Carolina

EF0
Rating
6.3 mi
Path length
25 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 25 yards (0.01 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 National Weather Service storm survey team confirmed an EF-0 tornado, with peak wind speeds of 60 mph, north of Pinewood in Sumter County, SC. The tornado began near Highway 261 south of Camp Mac Boykin Rd, moved northeast across Passageway Rd, then dissipated northeast of the intersection of Pinewood Rd and Cox Rd. The weak tornado snapped the trunks of a small pine and hardwood tree.

The wider storm

Hurricane Sally made landfall near Gulf Shores, AL, as a category 2 hurricane, in the early morning of Wednesday, September 16, 2020, and then weakened and turned to the NE, tracking across the Central Savannah River Area of Georgia, and across Central SC, as a post-tropical area of low pressure, on Thursday, September 17. Moisture, instability and low level wind shear, associated with the low, provided tornadoes, heavy rain, and flooding. 48-hour rainfall totals of 2 to 6 inches fell across a large portion of the Midlands of SC, with higher rainfall amounts of 6 to almost 9 inches observed across portions of the southern and eastern Midlands from lower Orangeburg Co NE across S Calhoun Co, Sumter Co, Clarendon Co and S Lee Co SC. A total of 9 confirmed tornadoes occurred in Central SC during the morning and early afternoon of Sept. 17.

Began near Pinewood (33.7507, -80.5047).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 914158. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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