EF0 tornado, Littleville, Alabama, November 6, 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

November 6, 2018

Touchdown

12:18 AM CST (06:18 UTC)

Lifted

12:21 AM CST (06:21 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (1.9 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Colbert County

Touchdown point

34.572, -87.733

Lift-off point

34.579, -87.715

Record number

1811060018-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS HUN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 76 mph.

• Completed by Colbert/Franklin EMA

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

A line of strong to severe thunderstorms moved east through across all of north Alabama during the late evening hours of the 5th and early morning hours of the 6th. Three tornadoes occurred in Colbert, Lauderdale and Jackson Counties. There were also a few other reports of damaging winds. In the Shoals, rainfall of 1-1.5 inches fell in an hour or less, producing multiple reports of brief flash flooding in Tuscumbia and Sheffield.

A tornado resulted in numerous trees being damaged in far southern Colbert County. The primary damage indicators were a combination of soft and hardwood trees. Much of the damaged trees had large branches snapped off with one tree fully uprooted south of the intersection of Cook Creek Road and Ligon Springs Road. Maximum wind, using an uprooted hardwood tree, was determined to be 76 mph.

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

16 minutes of warning. NWS HUN issued a tornado warning for this county at 06:02 UTC, 16 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 06:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 04:30 UTC and running to 07:17 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. The outlook in force was issued at 05:35 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), 94 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:17 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 2018 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are

8 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.