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EF0 tornado in Columbia County, Oregon

Tornado November 10, 2020 · Columbia County, Oregon

EF0

Rating

1.7 mi

Path length

200 yd

Path width

$40K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 200 yards (0.11 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 tornado touched down around 12:20 PM in Northwest St. Helens, OR near the intersection of Pittsburgh and Robnette Road. The tornado moved southeastward, ending near just east of McBride Elementary School. The most damage was done near Barr Ave and Pittsburgh Road, with damage to trees, a camper, fences and snapped power lines.

The wider storm

On the afternoon of November 10, 2020 in the city of St. Helens, OR, while in a fairly typically post-frontal convective environment for the fall and early winter. The environment was a of a kind of a hybrid low-topped supercell with a contribution from non-supercell tornadogenesis processes. This lead to the development of an EF-0 tornado with maximum estimated winds speeds between 60-65 mph.

Began near St Helens (45.8600, -122.8500).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 921015. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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