EF0 tornado, Opelika to Mitchell Xrd, Alabama, July 21, 2018

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

July 21, 2018

Touchdown

5:43 PM CDT (22:43 UTC)

Lifted

6:01 PM CDT (23:01 UTC)

On the ground

18 minutes

Path length

5.7 miles (9.2 km)

Path width

500 yards (457 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lee County

Touchdown point

32.649, -85.370

Lift-off point

32.566, -85.361

Record number

1807211643-01

39 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 85 mph.

• Edit for speed. Pointing south.
• several shallow uproots. no damage to house.
• no house damage. trunk also rotted.
• many snapped and uprooted. convergence pattern! no structural damage.

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

A unseasonably cold core upper low was centered over the Ohio Valley States. Northwest flow aloft pushed several fast moving short wave troughs through East Alabama on July 21st and July 22nd. The combination of cold air aloft and moist low levels of the atmosphere produced very unstable conditions across east Alabama with CAPE values 4000-5000 J/kg each afternoon.

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in central Lee County and determined that it was consistent with an EF0 tornado, with maximum sustained winds near 85 mph. The tornado touched down in the city of Opelika near the intersection of South 3rd Street and Avenue D. The tornado tracked south and snapped or uprooted many trees before crossing Interstate 85. It then shifted towards the southeast as it crossed Chewacla Road, where it continued to snap or uproot trees. The tornado shifted back to a southerly track and crossed Highway 69 and Royal Drive. It then took a southwest track before lifting near Stringfellow Road.

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

NWS Birmingham, AL wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Jul 20, 6:39 PM CDT, 23 hours 4 minutes earlier.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>Service Notice</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="index.css">
</head>
<body>
  <main class="wrap">
    <section class="card" role="status" aria-live="polite">
      <div class="status" id="status">Temporary Notice</div>
      <h1 id="headline">This service is currently unavailable.</h1>
      <p id="message1">
        The site you requested is temporarily down for maintenance or an unexpected outage.
      </p>
      <p id="message2">
        Please try again in a few minutes.
      </p>
      <p class="small" id="detail">
        If you are an administrator, restore upstream service and remove the redirect/fallback rule when normal operations resume.
      </p>
    </section>
  </main>
  <script src="index.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>Service Notice</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="index.css">
</head>
<body>
  <main class="wrap">
    <section class="card" role="status" aria-live="polite">
      <div class="status" id="status">Temporary Notice</div>
      <h1 id="headline">This service is currently unavailable.</h1>
      <p id="message1">
        The site you requested is temporarily down for maintenance or an unexpected outage.
      </p>
      <p id="message2">
        Please try again in a few minutes.
      </p>
      <p class="small" id="detail">
        If you are an administrator, restore upstream service and remove the redirect/fallback rule when normal operations resume.
      </p>
    </section>
  </main>
  <script src="index.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Auburn-Opelika Apt (AUO), 6 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Maxwell AFB radar (KMXX), 41 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:40 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2018 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are

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.