EF1 tornado, Mt Pleasant, Florida, February 18, 2008

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

February 18, 2008

Touchdown

1:08 AM EST (06:08 UTC)

Lifted

1:13 AM EST (06:13 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

6.2 miles (10.0 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$200,000

County

Gadsden County

Touchdown point

30.607, -84.754

Lift-off point

30.670, -84.680

Record number

0802180008-01

Severe thunderstorms produced several reports of damaging winds and a tornado over portions of the Florida Panhandle.

The tornado touched down just south of Interstate 10 at Mile Marker 168. An tractor-trailer was blown over on the interstate with only minor injuries to the driver. The next area of damage was just east of the community of Hardaway, or three miles north of the interstate. At this location numerous trees were snapped or uprooted with minor damage to two mobile homes. A 19-foot boat was flipped over and shed were destroyed on Finnuff Road. More significant damage was observed in the community of Mt Pleasant where a few homes were damaged. A home on B.W. Martin Road sustained complete roof failure and a loss of a free standing carport. The metal sheeting was scattered through the neighboring field and twisted like rope. About a mile north of U.S. Highway 90 on Mt Pleasant Road, two homes sustained severe roof damage with large oak trees uprooted around the homes. At this location, the tornado reached its peak intensity of EF1 with a path width of 150 yards prior to lifting as the parent supercell storm traveled northeast.

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

2 minutes of warning. NWS TAE issued a tornado warning for this county at 06:06 UTC, 2 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 06:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:03 UTC and running to 08:00 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 05:58 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 Tallahassee radar (KTLH), 46 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:08 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 2008 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.