EF0 tornado, Blount Spgs to Bangor, Alabama, April 8, 2019

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

April 8, 2019

Touchdown

5:15 AM CDT (10:15 UTC)

Lifted

5:19 AM CDT (10:19 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.2 miles (3.5 km)

Path width

325 yards (297 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Blount County

Touchdown point

33.913, -86.769

Lift-off point

33.930, -86.737

Record number

1904080415-01

1 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 74 mph.

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

A slow moving upper trough over the Southern Plains States produced a series of mesoscale convective systems that moved out of Mississippi and across north Alabama.|Drier air aloft produced steep mid level lapse rates each day which resulted in a number of hail reports on April 6th and 7th. Low level winds backed during the early morning hours on April 8th and briefly produced favorable conditions for a weak tornado.

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in Blount County and determined that it was consistent with an EF0 tornado, with maximum sustained winds near 85 mph. The tornado touched down along Blount County Road 7 on the north side of Hayden Mountain and tracked east-northeast across inaccessible forested land.|It crossed Graves Gap Road for the first time just north of Graves Gap Way, where four large hardwoods were uprooted, with one tree resting on a residence. The tornado continued to produce tree damage as it once again crossed Graves Gap Road, but also damaged a home and a barn near the intersection of Holt Circle and Graves Gap Road. A residence on Graves Gap Road sustained siding damage and lost a few shingles, and a barn had part of its roof damaged. The tornado dissipated soon after crossing Holt Circle.

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

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 05:59 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.

NWS Birmingham, AL wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Apr 8, 3:59 AM CDT, 1 hour 16 minutes earlier.

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In the hours before

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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.

Birmingham Municipal (BHM), 40 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Birmingham radar (KBMX), 83 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 10:13 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 2019 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.