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EF1 tornado in Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Tornado September 1, 2021 · Bucks County, Pennsylvania

EF1
Rating
3.0 mi
Whole path
200 yd
Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Burlington County, New Jersey → Bucks County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

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 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

The tornado which began in Burlington County, New Jersey crossed the Burlington-Bristol Bridge and moved into Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As the tornado passed through a wooded floodplain along

the banks of the Delaware River, no visible damage was noted

either. The tornado then lifted just before reaching downtown

Bristol, PA, with several trees being snapped along the Bristol

Wharf.

The wider storm

The remnants of Hurricane Ida impacted the mid-Atlantic on September 1, 2021. As it moved northward, Ida began transitioning to a strong mid-latitude cyclone with pronounced frontal features, but with continued tropical moisture. On a regional level, the remnants of Ida became one of the most severe natural disasters in US history, due to a combination of several tornadoes, some of them strong, as well as catastrophic flooding over a large and densely populated area. The severe weather threat unfolded as the system's developing warm front lifted northward from the Delmarva region into Pennsylvania and New Jersey. South of the warm front, partial clearing and moderate to strong instability developed. Meanwhile, very strong shear and forcing, along with tropical moisture, were present within the warm sector. The result was widespread convection in the form of both supercell and quasi-linear thunderstorms. A number of storms became severe across the region, producing several tornadoes and other instances of wind damage. This continued an exceptionally active stretch of high end severe weather in the region, coming barely a month after the tornado outbreak of July 29.

Began near West Bristol (40.0816, -74.8695).

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 972397. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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