EF1 tornado, Youngblood to (Toi)Troy Muni Arpt, Alabama, March 23, 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

March 23, 2012

Touchdown

9:26 AM CDT (14:26 UTC)

Lifted

9:33 AM CDT (14:33 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.7 km)

Path width

700 yards (640 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Pike County

Touchdown point

31.838, -86.044

Lift-off point

31.855, -86.023

Record number

1203230826-01

14 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.

• Tree snapped with a lot of rot. A few tree limbs snapped across the road. 100 yards at most. Start point of Troy EF-1 Tornado.
• Storm weakened rapidly, depositing debris in this field near this location. Approximate End Point of Troy EF-1 Tornado.
• Rather rotted large tree. Several tree branches snapped CR 1 to 1101 to the northeast. BEGIN damage path.
• Large hardwood uprooted pointing south.

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

An upper level closed low moved across Missouri during the day on March 23. Several shortwaves moving around the base of the trough, traversed across central Alabama. The shortwaves created enough lift to sustain a line of convection that moved through portions of central Alabama during the morning and afternoon hours. Heavy rainfall led to flooding in some areas, and there was one tornado that moved through Pike County.

A tornado touched down initially just southwest of Pike CR 1 about 2.5 miles southwest of Troy Municipal Airport, where a large partially rotted tree was snapped, and several large tree branches at the edges of plowed fields were snapped. It proceeded northeastward across wooded land and rapidly intensified, becoming 700 yards wide as it crossed beeman creek. As it approached CR 1148, the tornado snapped numerous trees, also causing damage to 3 inactive chicken barns. One of the barns lost about 50 percent of the roofing, with structural damage to less than 20 percent of the rafters. Snapped trees also caused minor damage to 2 homes and a single-wide manufactured home. The tornado then weakened rapidly and dissipated over an open field less than a mile from the airport.

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

27 minutes of warning. NWS BMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 13:59 UTC, 27 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 14:30 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 General Thunderstorms Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 12:43 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.

Troy Municipal (TOI), 3 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

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

13 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.