EF1 tornado, Morgan City, Alabama, March 24, 2023

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 24, 2023

Touchdown

12:47 AM CDT (05:47 UTC)

Lifted

12:50 AM CDT (05:50 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

2.1 miles (3.4 km)

Path width

325 yards (297 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Morgan County

Touchdown point

34.476, -86.600

Lift-off point

34.479, -86.564

Record number

2303242347-01

34 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS HUN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 120 mph.

• 10 500 lb hay bales inside barn also swept away downstream, but not found
• Loss of part of roof on small house adjacent to area of snapped and uprooted trees
• Multiple Trees uprooted and snapped in a converging fall pattern facing NW-N
• Trees snapped and uprooted here

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

A severe line of thunderstorms rolled through north Alabama during the late evening hours of the 24th into the early morning hours of the 25th, producing 7 tornadoes. An embedded supercell thunderstorm with a history of tornadoes in Mississippi moved east-northeast across northwest Alabama, yielding another two tornadoes in Lauderdale County in Florence and near Anderson. Associated with this line, multiple narrow swaths of intense damaging winds of 60 to 90 mph occurred across the Shoals metro area, including Sheffield, Tuscumbia, Muscle Shoals and Florence. The winds caused widespread power outages, damaged numerous structures, and toppled or snapped numerous trees, power poles and power lines. A few trees and power poles were dropped onto residences and vehicles, either destroying or heavily damaging them. Roof damages were reported at many locations as well. All told, an estimated #### million in damages occurred, the majority in northwest Alabama in Colbert and Lauderdale Counties. As the line continued east, additional tornadoes were spawned in Lawrence, Morgan, Jackson and DeKalb Counties.

A National Weather Service damage survey assessed tornado damage in northeastern Morgan County. Damage was consistent with an EF-1 tornado with a peak wind speed of 94 mph.||Many damage indicators were in the form of uprooted trees and minor structural damage. The tornado touched down near the Highway 32 and Crisco Circle intersection. Tracking east-northeast, numerous trees were uprooted along Rescue Road. Near Rescue Road and Highway 231, an unanchored shed was destroyed. The tornado crossed the highway and uprooted many more trees along Old Silo Road and also damaged the roof to chicken houses. The tornado lifted just west of the Morgan-Marshall County line.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS HUN issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:46 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 06:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 02:27 UTC and running to 06:28 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:14 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), 68 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:47 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 2023 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.