Tornadoes · United States · Florida · 2008
EF0 tornado, Delray Beach, Florida, June 13, 2008
This EF0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Palm Beach County on June 13, 2008, touching down at 2:10 PM EDT and reaching 10 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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
- EF0
- Date
- June 13, 2008
- Touchdown
- 2:10 PM EDT (18:10 UTC)
- Lifted
- 2:11 PM EDT (18:11 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.1 km)
- Path width
- 10 yards (9 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Palm Beach County
- Touchdown point
- 26.464, -80.058
- Lift-off point
- 26.464, -80.058
- Record number
- 0806131210-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Two short lived and weak waterspouts moved onshore at almost the same time at different locations, one in Miami Beach and the other in Delray Beach.
A small waterspout briefly moved onshore at Delray Beach just north of Atlantic Avenue. The waterspout stirred up some beach umbrellas and blankets, and dissipated shortly after touching land.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.
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 16:03 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.
Miami, FL (KMFL), 12:00Z
6.2 hours before the tornado, 75 km from the path. June 13, 2008.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1892 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -5 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1591 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 730 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 7 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 13 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -39 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 12 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.6 K/km
Miami, FL (KMFL), 00:00Z
5.8 hours after it, 75 km from the path. June 14, 2008.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1369 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -7 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1869 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 981 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 15 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 5 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -22 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- -6 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 7.0 K/km
The radar
The Miami radar (KAMX), 101 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:09 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.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2008 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 13, 2008
3 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
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.