EF1 tornado, Berlin to Simcoe, Alabama, March 28, 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 28, 2021

Touchdown

5:38 AM CDT (10:38 UTC)

Lifted

5:42 AM CDT (10:42 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.1 miles (3.4 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cullman County

Touchdown point

34.190, -86.740

Lift-off point

34.201, -86.706

Record number

2103280438-01

9 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS HUN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 86 mph.

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

A strong to severe line of thunderstorms, some with embedded supercellular storms, roared east across north Alabama from shortly after Midnight through around 6 am LST. Damaging winds were reported at numerous locations, including a narrow swath of damage with winds up to 80 mph in the town of Russellville in Franklin County, a short track EF-1 tornado in Fairview in Cullman County, and a narrow swath of damage with winds up to 85 mph in the town of Fyffe in DeKalb County.

A tornado touched down southwest of the Fairview community in Cullman County, snapping trees near the intersection of CR 747 and 1621. From there, the tornado moved northeast and continued snapping numerous hard and softwood trees along the path. Along CR 1634, the tornado destroyed a couple of farm outbuildings and was at its widest point near this location. A large swath of trees in a grove were snapped and uprooted to the northeast of the outbuilding damage. Damage continued as the tornado moved northeast, snapping trees, stopping short of County Road 1651. This was the end of the tornado path.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 04:28 UTC and running to 10:48 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 05:55 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 Northeast Alabama radar (KHTX), 101 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 10:37 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

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.