F0 tornado, Hialeah, Florida, August 21, 2001

1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 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. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 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

F0

Date

August 21, 2001

Touchdown

1:15 PM EDT (17:15 UTC)

Path length

4.0 miles (6.4 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Miami-Dade County

Touchdown point

25.850, -80.270

Lift-off point

25.770, -80.270

Record number

355

A tornado touched down in Hialeah and moved south southwest before lifting in the west Doral area. The funnel was visible up to 10 miles away and was photographed by numerous people and the media. No damage was observed along its path. Another small funnel cloud also formed from the parent thunderstorm.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 16:39 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 Miami, FL wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Aug 21, 10:00 AM EDT, 3 hours 15 minutes earlier.

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL
1000 AM EDT TUE AUG 21 2001

AS OF THIS MOMENT...NO CHANGES IN THE PREVIOUS FORECAST PACKAGE.
HOWEVER..I DO BELIEVE WE COULD SEE ISOLATED HEAVY PRECIP IN SOME
AREAS THIS AFTERNOON AS 12Z SOUNDING CAME IN WITH A HIGHER PW (1.90)
AND STILL MEAN STEERING FLOW IS VERY LIGHT. THIS WILL ALLOW ANY
THUNDERSTORM THAT DEVELOP TO REMAIN NEARLY STATIONARY OR DRIFT VERY
SLOWLY.

.MIA...NONE.

GARCIA

In the hours before

FLZ063-066>075-202000-

SOUTH FLORIDA HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK...UPDATED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL
930 AM EDT TUE AUG 21 2001

...SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS THIS AFTERNOON...
...SLIGHT CHANCE OF WATERSPOUTS ATLANTIC COASTAL WATERS...

SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS WILL DEVELOP ALONG THE EAST AND WEST COAST
SEA BREEZES THIS AFTERNOON. DAYTIME HEATING AND ABUNDANT TROPICAL
MOISTURE WILL COMBINE TO PRODUCE SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS OVER
INTERIOR SECTIONS OF SOUTH FLORIDA.

ON THE WEST COAST...THE THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY WILL MOVE SLOWLY
TOWARD THE INTERIOR OF SOUTH FLORIDA. ON THE EAST COAST...THE
THUNDERSTORMS WILL MOVE TOWARD THE EAST COAST METROPOLITAN AREAS AND
ALONG THE SEA BREEZE.

THE PRIMARY HAZARDS FROM THESE THUNDERSTORMS WILL BE FREQUENT CLOUD
TO GROUND LIGHTNING STRIKES...LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL ALONG WITH
GUSTY WINDS. HOWEVER...SOME OF THE THUNDERSTORMS COULD APPROACH
SEVERE LIMITS WITH GUSTS UP TO 40 MPH. SPOTTER ACTIVATION IS
REQUESTED FOR THIS AFTERNOON.

A LIGHT EAST TO SOUTHEAST LOW TO MID LEVEL WIND FLOW WILL RESULT IN
A SLIGHT CHANCE OF WATERSPOUTS OVER THE ATLANTIC COASTAL WATERS
TODAY.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION VISIT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN
MIAMI WEBSITE AT HTTP://WWW.SRH.NOAA.GOV/MIA.

GARCIA

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.

Miami International Airport (MIA), 5 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Miami radar (KAMX), 26 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:13 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 2001 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida 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.