EF0 tornado in Shelby County, Alabama

Tornado December 29, 2021 · Shelby County, Alabama

EF0

Rating

10.9 mi

Whole path

300 yd

Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Chilton County → Shelby County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 300 yards (0.17 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

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in southeast Shelby County and determined that it was consistent with an EF0 tornado, with maximum winds near 75 mph. This tornado crossed from Chilton County into Shelby County near Wilderness Trail and tracked southeast for several miles before dissipating near Highway 145. Damage consisted of uprooted trees.

The wider storm

A line of storms with embedded supercells developed south of an outflow boundary ahead of a slow-moving cold front, producing damaging winds and several tornadoes across the northern portions of central Alabama during the evening hours on December 29th. The surface boundary shifted into the southern counties of central Alabama on December 30th. The low level shear was not favorable for tornadoes, but the storms were robust enough to produce damaging winds and large hail.

Began near Shelby (33.0550, -86.6170).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF1 Lamar County EF0 Etowah County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 995905. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

Tornadoes near your address

See every tornado that passed near a place you know, measured to its path.