Tornadoes · United States · Alabama · 2000
F2 tornado, Irvington, Alabama, November 6, 2000
This F2 tornado ran 1.5 miles across Mobile County on November 6, 2000, touching down at 9:30 PM CST and reaching 300 yards wide. It killed nobody and injured 2, and did $100,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
F040 to 72 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
F2113 to 157 mphthis tornado
Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.
F3158 to 206 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
F4207 to 260 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
F5261 to 318 mph
Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.
Unrated
The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.
The record
- Rating
- F2
- Date
- November 6, 2000
- Touchdown
- 9:30 PM CST (03:30 UTC)
- Path length
- 1.5 miles (2.4 km)
- Path width
- 300 yards (274 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 2
- Property damage
- $100,000
- County
- Mobile County
- Touchdown point
- 30.500, -88.230
- Lift-off point
- 30.500, -88.230
- Record number
- 592
What the Weather Service recorded
A thunderstorm produced an F2 tornado that first touched down near the intersection of Highway 188 and Four Mile Road. A house suffered roof damage and a couple of barns were damaged. Trees were also blown down. The tornado moved northeast and trees were blown down along County Road 15. The tornado then touched down in a Mobile Home Park. One of the homes was completely destroyed with the occupants riding out the storm huddled together inside a bathtub. The two sisters were thrown out of the home as the tornado blew it from its foundation and turned it over several times. They were found in the woods behind their home with only minor injuries. Some of the other homes in the neighborhood suffered damage with skirting and parts of roofs torn off. The tornado continued northeast and did some minor damage near Howerin Road and near the intersection of Two Mile and Beverly Roads. The tornado then lifted back into the cloud.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
1 minute of warning. NWS MOB issued a tornado warning for this county at 03:29 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02:40 UTC | 03:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | MOB |
| 03:29 UTC | 04:00 UTC | Tornado Warning | MOB |
| 04:03 UTC | 04:30 UTC | Tornado Warning | MOB |
| 04:20 UTC | 05:45 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | MOB |
Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.
The forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:43 UTC.
SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.
The air that afternoon
The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.
Slidell Radar S, LA (KSIL), 00:00Z
3.5 hours before the tornado, 144 km from the path. November 7, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 528 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -5 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 917 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 746 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 48 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 16 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 76 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 155 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.1
- Supercell composite
- 1.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.7 K/km
Slidell Radar S, LA (KSIL), 12:00Z
8.5 hours after it, 144 km from the path. November 7, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -74652 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 951 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 31 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 21 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 85 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 192 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.5 K/km
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2000 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of November 6, 2000
2 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 6 | 5:45 AM CST | F2 | Avoyelles Parish, LA | 3.0 | 20 | 3 | $200,000 | |
| November 6 | 1:55 PM CST | F1 | Saint Tammany Parish, LA | 1.0 | 30 | $70,000 |
What this means
Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.