EF1 tornado, Arpt Highlands to Trussville, Alabama, March 25, 2021

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

March 25, 2021

Touchdown

4:48 PM CDT (21:48 UTC)

Lifted

4:53 PM CDT (21:53 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

4.8 miles (7.7 km)

Path width

700 yards (640 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Jefferson County

Touchdown point

33.569, -86.707

Lift-off point

33.602, -86.636

Record number

2103251548-01

241 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS BMX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 142 mph.

• Swath of snapped trees from soccer fields to ridgetop
• Massive and widespread to end of street
• Widespread timber damage at Shoal Creek Country Club.
• Not debarked but widespread intense area of trees snapped.

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

A potent storm system affected Central Alabama on Thursday, March 25th. A highly-sheared environment combined with increasing instability produced numerous tornadic thunderstorms. Severe parameters were supportive of significant and long-track supercells, prompting the issuance of a rare High Risk Convective Outlook from the Storm Prediction Center for portions of Central Alabama.||A total of 10 tornado tracks were surveyed in Central Alabama. This included 4 EF3 tornadoes, 3 EF2 tornadoes, and 3 EF1 tornadoes. Damage was significant along the paths of the most intense tornadoes and, unfortunately, injuries and fatalities occurred. |Some storms were cyclic, meaning multiple tornadoes were produced by the same storm. The most impressive tornado of the event was the long-track tornado that traveled nearly 80 miles from Hale County to Shelby County. This ranked as the seventh longest single tornado track in the state of Alabama.

National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in eastern Jefferson County and determined that it was consistent with an EF1 tornado, with maximum winds near 90 mph.||A tornado touched down near the intersection of 8th Ave South and 85th Street South in the South Eastlake and South Highlands neighborhoods of Birmingham. It traveled northeast into the South Roebuck neighborhood uprooting numerous trees. It made a jog eastward as it crossed the northern end of Ruffner mountain, continuing to uproot and snap numerous trees as it traveled between Highway 11 and Interstate 59 in the Roebuck Plaza neighborhood. The tornado crossed Interstate 459 and dissipated as it reached the Jefferson Memorial Gardens on the southwest side of Trussville. Around forty-two homes were damaged, almost all by uprooted trees.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS BMX issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:45 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:03 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:30 UTC and running to 00:47 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 High Risk, with a 0.30 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 22:26 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 Birmingham radar (KBMX), 47 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:48 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 2021 tornado in AlabamaEvery tornado in Alabama since 1950Warnings in force in Alabama nowThe forecast where you are

19 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.