EF0 tornado, Kismet, California, March 1, 2024

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

March 1, 2024

Touchdown

3:50 PM PST (23:50 UTC)

Lifted

3:55 PM PST (23:55 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

0.4 miles (0.7 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Madera County

Touchdown point

37.023, -120.059

Lift-off point

37.024, -120.052

Record number

2403011750-01

A large cold upper trough dropped out of the Gulf of Alaska on February 29 and had deepened off the Pacific Northwest coast on March 1 spreading widespread precipitation as far south a central California. The trough then slowly moved east across the Pacific Northwest on March 2 and 3 before moving east of the region on March 4. This system brought moderate to heavy precipitation to the Sierra Nevada which picked up between 2 and 4 inches of liquid precipitation north of Kings Canyon and 1 to 2 inches further south. The precipitation fell as snow above 5000 feet for the duration of the event and produced 2 to 4 feet on new snowfall north of Kings Canyon and 1.5 to 3 feet of snow further south. This system also produced a half inch to an inch of rainfall in Merced County and a quarter to half inch across most of the remainder of the San Joaquin Valley. Most of the Kern County Mountains and Deserts picked up 1 to 2 tenths of an inch of rainfall. In addition to the precipitation, strong winds also accompanied this system and combined with the snow to produce near blizzard conditions over the Sierra Nevada north of Kings Canyon between the morning of March 1 and the morning of March 3. Scattered thunderstorms also broke out during the afternoons of March 1 and March 2 over parts of the San Joaquin Valley. While the thunderstorms were not heavy rain producers, several funnel clouds were observed and one cell produced a weak tornado in northeast Madera during the afternoon of March 1. In addition to the precipitation, several stations in the Kern County Mountains and Deserts measured wind gusts exceeding 45 mph between the evening of March 2 and the early morning of March 4.

A funnel cloud which had been previously reported by a trained spotter spawned a small tornado in northeast Madera which was on the ground for around 5 minutes and moved eastward around a half mile. The tornado damaged some portable classrooms at Berenda Elementary School in Madera.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS HNX issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:47 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:15 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 19:53 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 San Joaquin Valley radar (KHNX), 87 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:49 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 2024 tornado in CaliforniaEvery tornado in California since 1950Warnings in force in California 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.