EF1 tornado, Double Spgs Arpt to Nesmith, Alabama, April 11, 2013

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

April 11, 2013

Touchdown

3:26 PM CDT (20:26 UTC)

Lifted

3:27 PM CDT (20:27 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.4 miles (0.6 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

County

Winston County

Touchdown point

34.193, -87.120

Lift-off point

34.198, -87.122

Record number

1304111426-01

44 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS HUN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• Mobile home vaulted 50 yards and twisted. Tied down in only two locations on southern end of home.
• Mobile home pushed and collapsed. It was not anchored in any way.
• Multiple pine trees snapped in a ~25 yd wide path
• multiple pine trees snapped & uprooted, including a few snapped at the base atop a small ridge. most others in the valley snapped 30+ feet aloft

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

Severe thunderstorms ahead of and along a cold front moved across Central Alabama on Thursday, April 11th. Storms along the cold front formed into a quasi-linear convective system, causing wind damage and producing seven tornadoes across the area. Ahead of the line, strong daytime heating and increasing instabilities coupled with strong diffluence aloft created prime conditions for discrete thunderstorms to form. These storms caused wind damage across portions of northeast Central Alabama during the late afternoon.

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed the damage between Double Springs and Houston in Winston County and have determined that the damage was due to a brief EF-1 tornado, with winds of 105 mph. The tornado touched down along Highway 278 just east of the Winston County Airport. The tornado tracked generally north where it snapped and uprooted numerous trees. The tornado then moved along the Sipsey Fork, which feeds into Smith Lake. One boat house was destroyed, and a pontoon boat inside was flipped over. Several hardwood trees fell onto lake homes and sheds along Gary's Road and Spiller Road. The tornado weakened as it approached Robinson Bottom Road and lift north of Robinson Bottom Road.

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed the damage in Winston County and have determined that the damage was due to an EF-1 tornado, with winds of 100 mph. The brief tornado touched down in a field just southeast of the intersection of County Road 45 and County Road 3734. This location was approximately 3.49 miles east southeast of Addison. The tornado snapped and uprooted several large trees, completely demolished two sheds, and damaged a double wide home where a woman was injured. The woman was injured as she attempted to enter her vehicle and go to a shelter. The tornado continued north northwest where it twisted and rolled an unoccupied mobile home over 50 yards. The tornado snapped several more trees and rolled an unsecured mobile home on Dakota Drive. The tornado lifted just beyond Dakota Drive.

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

9 minutes of warning. NWS BMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:17 UTC, 9 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:00 UTC and running to 21:38 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:45 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 Columbus AFB radar (KGWX), 116 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:26 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 2013 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.