EF0 tornado in Orangeburg County, South Carolina

Tornado September 17, 2020 · Orangeburg County, South Carolina

EF0

Rating

0.2 mi

Path length

100 yd

Path width

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 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 Survey Team confirmed a weak tornado briefly touched down in eastern Orangeburg County near I-95. The tornado broke large limbs off of trees on Highway 15 near Crossroads Onyx Way and Po Chance Drive.

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 Wells (33.3859, -80.4847).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF0 Sumter County EF0 Calhoun County EF0 Calhoun County EF0 Sumter County EF0 Clarendon County EF0 Clarendon County EFU Sumter County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 914176. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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