EF1 tornado, Braggs to Beechwood, Alabama, December 25, 2012

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

December 25, 2012

Touchdown

8:09 PM CST (02:09 UTC)

Lifted

8:10 PM CST (02:10 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

2.0 miles (3.3 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lowndes County

Touchdown point

32.051, -86.850

Lift-off point

32.066, -86.820

Record number

1212252009-01

4 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 105 mph.

• Shingles removed from a couple of residences. Approximate end point.
• .Snapped hardwood tree. Gutter on elementary school peeled up.
• .Several hardwoods uprooted and numerous pines snapped.

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

Late Christmas Eve, a well amplified upper level trough dug into the southern Plains. In response, a surface low developed Christmas morning over southern Texas. As the upper low deepened and tilted negatively, the surface low strengthened as it moved eastward. By Christmas afternoon, a swath of severe weather swept across the Deep South, with discrete supercells and a broken line of thunderstorms in trail. These thunderstorms moved across central Alabama during the evening hours, bringing with them strong straight line winds, numerous tornadoes, as well as flooding.

An EF-1 tornado touched down just inside the county line on Farmersville Road causing minimal tree damage, then continued east- northeast causing additional tree damage on County Road 7. The tornado lifted just to the east of CR 7.

This brief EF-0 touchdown occurred in the Mosses community. Several homes had minor shingle damage, siding was peeled from the side of the elementary school, and one rotten hardwood was snapped. The tornado lifted just east of Mason Dr.

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

2 minutes of warning. NWS BMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:07 UTC, 2 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:53 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:42 UTC and running to 04:00 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 01:01 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.

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 2012 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are

32 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.