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EF1 tornado in Sequoyah County, Oklahoma

Tornado May 3, 2021 · Sequoyah County, Oklahoma

EF1

Rating

41.8 mi

Whole path

1,200 yd

Path width

Injury

$16.2M

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Sequoyah County → Sequoyah County → Crawford County, Arkansas → Sebastian County, Arkansas → Crawford County, Arkansas → Crawford County, Arkansas → Crawford County, Arkansas; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 1,200 yards (0.68 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

This is the first segment of a four segment tornado. The tornado developed southeast of Muldrow, where trees were uprooted. It moved northeast uprooting trees, toppling multiple center-pivot irrigation systems, and snapping power poles to near Moffett. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in this segment of the tornado was 95 to 105 mph. The tornado continued into Crawford County, Arkansas.

The wider storm

Severe thunderstorms developed across portions of eastern Oklahoma during the evening of the 3rd, along and mostly east of a stationary front that stretched across the area. The air mass across southeastern Oklahoma and west central Arkansas became very unstable ahead of the storms, and wind shear across the region increased as an upper level disturbance approached from the west. These conditions supported the development of supercells and bowing line segments, which produced several tornadoes, large hail up to ping pong ball size, and damaging wind gusts.

Began near Paw Paw (35.3630, -94.5470).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 958722. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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