EF1 tornado in Iredell County, North Carolina

NWS storm survey found the path of an EF1 tornado that developed in western Iredell County along Massey Deal Rd, just west of Old Mountain Rd. The tornado tracked north-northwest, crossing Miracle Farm Rd and Lindsey Farm Rd before crossing into Alexander County near Smith Farm Rd south of Stony Point. Damage was almost entirely limited to uprooted hardwoods and snapped softwoods, with the most significant damage being a stand of pine trees on Waugh Farm Rd that were snapped as high as 20 feet above the ground. A couple of homes did receive very minor structural damage.

Tropical Storm Fred made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on the 16th and lifted steadily north through Georgia and into the southern Appalachians during the 16th and throughout the 17th. Tropical moisture and strong southeast upslope flow into the Blue Ridge mountains resulted in widespread showers and some thunderstorms producing extremely heavy rainfall rates. By the time the rain tapered off by the end of the 17th, 24-hour rainfall amounts of 5-12 inches were reported across portions of the mountains and foothills. This was in addition to a small area of 5-10 inch amounts that fell across portions of the southern North Carolina mountains during the morning of the 16th. The result of this rainfall was significant to catastrophic flash flooding across portions of the French Broad and Pigeon River basins, including some of the worst flooding to impact these areas in almost 20 years. The most severe flooding occurred in portions of southern and central Haywood County, where a number of fatalities and hundreds of millions of dollars and damage occurred. In addition, a brief tornado touched down in Iredell County and tracked into Alexander County.