EF0 tornado, Kymulga to Winterboro, Alabama, January 23, 2012

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   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

EF0

Date

January 23, 2012

Touchdown

5:35 AM CST (11:35 UTC)

Lifted

5:41 AM CST (11:41 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

5.4 miles (8.7 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Talladega County

Touchdown point

33.296, -86.295

Lift-off point

33.322, -86.209

Record number

1201230535-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS BMX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• House and storage building sustained light roof damage. Start point of DeSoto Caverns EF-0 Tornado.
• Most concentrated damage at this location, where about a dozen large pine trees were uprooted.
• A few trees uprooted. End point of DeSoto Caverns EF-0 Tornado.

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

An upper level low pressure system developed over the Great Plains and moved east across the Ohio River Valley, dragging a cold front through the lower Mississippi River Valley. As the cold front moved through Arkansas, a squall line formed, producing severe thunderstorms to areas west of Alabama. As the cold front progressed eastward, individual supercells developed in advance of the front and moved through Alabama during the early morning hours on January 23rd. Several long track supercells produced strong, long track tornadoes.

An EF-0 tornado touched down just west of the intersection of Alabama Highway 76 and County Road 175, causing minor roof damage to a house and storage building. The tornado moved to the northeast along Alabama Highway 76. The most concentrated damage, with winds estimated between 70 and 80 mph, was at the intersection of Alabama Highway 76 and Booker Road, where a dozen large pine trees were uprooted. Sporadic tree damage continued along the path until the tornado lifted along Alabama Highway 76, just east of Risersmill Rd.

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

11 minutes of warning. NWS BMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 11:24 UTC, 11 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 11:50 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 08:45 UTC and running to 13:59 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 Slight 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.

The Birmingham radar (KBMX), 50 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 11:32 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

11 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.