EF1 tornado, Exmoor to Vangale, 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

3:15 PM CST (21:15 UTC)

Lifted

3:21 PM CST (21:21 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

4.7 miles (7.6 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Marengo County

Touchdown point

32.024, -87.869

Lift-off point

32.087, -87.841

Record number

1212251515-01

7 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 90 mph.

• Several trees snapped at this location along county road 8. Some hardwood and softwood.
• Numerous hardwood and softwood trees snapped and uprooted. Width looks to be around 100 yards.
• Several small pine trees were snapped behind a residence,
• Some timber damage about 300-400 yards to the southwest of a residence off Hoboken Road. Approximate start point of Vangale EF-1 Tornado.

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 southwest of Dixons Mill on Hoboken Road. The tornado tracked north northeastward and crossed County Road 6, County Road 8 and Highway 10. The tornado lifted after it crossed Highway 10 along Southern Pines Drive. Very minimal structural damage was noted along the path. The damage was mainly limited to numerous trees that were either snapped or uprooted. Several people witnessed the tornado.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:58 UTC and running to 01:30 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 19:51 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.

The Mobile radar (KMOB), 157 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:13 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 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.