Tornadoes · United States · Florida · 2006
F0 tornado, Apopka, Florida, October 7, 2006
This F0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Orange County on October 7, 2006, touching down at 7:55 PM EDT and reaching 30 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $70,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
F040 to 72 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
F4207 to 260 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- F0
- Date
- October 7, 2006
- Touchdown
- 7:55 PM EDT (23:55 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.2 km)
- Path width
- 30 yards (27 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $70,000
- County
- Orange County
- Touchdown point
- 28.670, -81.500
- Lift-off point
- 28.670, -81.500
- Record number
- 950
What the Weather Service recorded
A weak frontal boundary across central Florida produced thunderstorms, hail and a small F0 tornado.
A small F0 tornado touched down briefly in Apopka blowing down small trees, power lines and taking the flat roof surface off a small apartment building.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
4 minutes of warning. NWS MLB issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:51 UTC, 4 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:20 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23:03 UTC | 00:10 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | MLB |
| 23:51 UTC | 00:20 UTC | Tornado Warning | MLB |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:49 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 air that afternoon
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.
Cape Canaveral, FL (KXMR), 12:00Z
11.9 hours before the tornado, 100 km from the path. October 7, 2006.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 792 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -14 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1504 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 673 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 13 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 11 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 2 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 2 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.4 K/km
The radar
The Melbourne radar (KMLB), 103 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:56 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23:11 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | Eustis | Lake, FL | HIGHWAY 19 AND 441 STRONG WINDS PRODUCING HORIZONTAL RAINFALL |
| 23:41 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | Mount Plymouth | Lake, FL | LARGE AMOUNT OF MARBLE TO PENNY SIZE HAIL |
| 23:50 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | 1 N Apopka | Orange, FL | LARGE AMOUNT OF HAIL NEAR ROCK SPRINGS |
| 23:55 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Apopka | Orange, FL | PRELIMINARY REPORTS OF POWER OUTAGES |
| 23:57 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | Apopka | Orange, FL | |
| 00:00 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Apopka | Orange, FL | ROOF COLLAPSE 201 S. FOREST AVE. 75 PEOPLE DISPLACED. TREE DAMAGE IN SAME AREA. POSSIBLE TORNADO. |
| 00:00 UTC | TORNADO | Apopka | Orange, FL | NWS PERSONNEL SURVEYED THE DAMAGE WHICH OCCURRED IN APOPKA LAST EVENING AND DETERMINED THAT A BRIEF TOUCHDOWN PRODUCING F0 DAMAGE OCCURRED AT ABOUT 800 PM. A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF A FLAT TAR/ASPHALT ROOF WAS PEELED OFF |
| 00:02 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Apopka | Orange, FL | PRELIMINARY REPORTS OF POWER OUTAGES |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2006 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.