EF1 tornado, Fernbank to Millport, Alabama, November 30, 2010

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   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.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 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.

7. 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.

Rating

EF1

Date

November 30, 2010

Touchdown

1:41 AM CST (07:41 UTC)

Lifted

1:43 AM CST (07:43 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.4 miles (2.2 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$145,000

County

Lamar County

Touchdown point

33.553, -88.102

Lift-off point

33.566, -88.084

Record number

1011300141-01

40 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS BMX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

• Estimated start point of Millbrook EF-1 Tornado. Location was inaccessible by car and by foot.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A powerful late fall storm system, and associated cold frontal passage through Alabama, brought widespread thunderstorms to the state. Some of the storms in Central Alabama produced damaging winds and tornadoes.

The tornado touched down about 1 mile southwest of the city of Millport, where it uprooted several trees. From there, it moved northeastward and crossed AL-17 about a half mile west of Millport. On both sides of the highway, 50 to 70 trees were either snapped off or uprooted, and a few homes sustained shingle damage. Tree limbs were actually embedded into the roof of one home. In the same general area, a tractor trailer was overturned and a metal roof was blown off a garage building. In addition, Metal roof stripping was blown off a barn roof and was transported 100 yards downstream into the top of a 60 foot tree. The tornado lifted on the north side of Millport, near James Street, where a few more trees were snapped off and a barn was damaged.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

17 minutes of warning. NWS BMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 07:24 UTC, 17 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 08:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 05:44 UTC and running to 09:08 UTC.

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 Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 05:58 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 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.

Columbus Afb (CBM), 34 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Columbus AFB radar (KGWX), 43 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 07:41 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2010 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are

15 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.