EF2 tornado, Dancy to Owens, Alabama, February 2, 2016

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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

February 2, 2016

Touchdown

4:34 PM CST (22:34 UTC)

Lifted

5:09 PM CST (23:09 UTC)

On the ground

35 minutes

Path length

26.2 miles (42.2 km)

Path width

1,200 yards (1097 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

County

Pickens County

Touchdown point

33.027, -88.318

Lift-off point

33.340, -88.064

Record number

1602021634-01

100 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS BMX and NWS JAN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU. The highest wind the damage implies is 135 mph.

• . double wide home slit approximately 50 feet northeast of the pilings.
• 2single wide homes destroyed
• 9 homes damaged along MLK Rd
• Left Edge. Dead/weak limb snaps

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

A strong upper level system developed over the Central Plains and a surface low moved from the Mid Mississippi Valley into the Great Lakes. Although this was well removed from Central Alabama, the system was strong enough that winds at the surface and aloft increased significantly. This produced high wind shear. The combination of the high precipitable water values and unseasonably warm temperatures produced very unstable conditions across central Alabama. A cold front approached the region late Tuesday afternoon into Tuesday evening, a few supercell thunderstorms developed. Eventually, the storms became organized into a line and produced heavy rainfall and flash flooding.

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in Pickens County and determined that the damage was consistent with an EF-2 tornado. Maximum winds were estimated to be around 135 mph. The tornado first touched down in southwestern Pickens County south of AL Hwy 32 and west of County Road 87. From there, it continued on a northeastward path across a large part of Pickens County. The tornado was caught live on Camera by local media just after it crossed the intersection of Hwy 32 and County Road 1, just west of Cochrane. It continued northeast to the Cochrane Campground on the Tombigbee River, where scores of trees were snapped, causing minor damage to one of the buildings on the campground. The tornado first reached EF-2 magnitude as it crossed private wooded land just south of County Road 78 snapping and uprooting hundreds of trees. As the tornado crossed Huff-Barnett Road, it mowed down a wide swath of trees, with a distinct classic convergence pattern of tree fall just east of Beaver Creek. The tornado continued northeastward across Al Hwy 14 causing damage to the federal prison, and then moved on to the Martin Luther King Road/Sapp community northwest of Aliceville. Here, the tornado reached its highest rated damage. Many of the homes in this portion of the Sapp community received some extent of damage, and several were destroyed. From there, the weakening tornado continued northeastward roughly parallel to AL Hwy 17 over open and forested rural Pickens County until it passed just west of Carrollton. The tornado reintensified and broadened somewhat, with a more significant tree-fall causing damage to a few homes on the west side of Carrollton. The tornado continued on the same northeastward path gradually weakening over rural areas before lifting near Herbert Windle Road southwest of Reform.

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 22:23 UTC, 11 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:12 UTC and running to 03:59 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 20:28 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.

Golden Tri(Awos) (GTR), 48 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Columbus AFB radar (KGWX), 80 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:33 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 2016 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are

9 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.