Tornadoes · United States · Florida · 2008
EF0 tornado, West Panama City to Brannonville, Florida, October 8, 2008
From West Panama City to Brannonville, this EF0 tornado ran 3.5 miles across Bay County on October 8, 2008, touching down at 8:23 AM CDT and reaching 125 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $500,000 of property damage.
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
- October 8, 2008
- Touchdown
- 8:23 AM CDT (13:23 UTC)
- Lifted
- 8:28 AM CDT (13:28 UTC)
- On the ground
- 5 minutes
- Path length
- 3.5 miles (5.6 km)
- Path width
- 125 yards (114 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $500,000
- County
- Bay County
- Touchdown point
- 30.145, -85.735
- Lift-off point
- 30.190, -85.712
- Record number
- 0810080723-01
What the Weather Service recorded
A morning waterspout on the 8th came ashore as a EF0 tornado in the Bay Point/Preserve subdivision and again at Port Panama City. Late in the afternoon, an EF1 tornado touched down a few miles southwest of Lloyd.
A waterspout formed over the Grand Lagoon and came ashore as a tornado in the Bay Point/Preserve subdivision. Windows and roofs of several homes were damaged, a chimney was blown off a roof, and several trees and power lines were toppled. The tornado reentered the bay and came ashore near the Port of Panama City. Before it dissipated, tt tore off the roof of a building at 23rd Street and Grant Avenue and damaged a mobile home in the 2500 block of Grant Avenue.
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, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 14:51 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.
Eglin AFB/Valpar, FL (KVPS), 00:00Z
10.6 hours after it, 82 km from the path. October 9, 2008.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 589 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -37 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1049 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1026 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 38 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 14 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -2 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 131 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.5 K/km
The radar
The Eglin Afb radar (KEVX), 48 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 13:23 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13:25 UTC | TORNADO | Panama City | Bay, FL | DAMAGE REPORTS TO BAYPOINT SUBDIVISION NEAR SAINT ANDREW STATE PARK. WINDOWS BLOWN OUT AT ONE OR MORE HOMES. ROOF DAMAGE TO A BUSINESS BUILDING. SEVERAL TREES AND POWER LINES DOWN. |
| 13:25 UTC | TORNADO | Panama City Beach | Bay, FL | BRIEF TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN AT PANAMA CITY BEACH AND DISSIPATED AS IT MOVED INLAND. NO REPORTS OF DAMAGE OR INJURIES. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
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 October 8, 2008
11 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 8 | 5:30 AM CDT | EF0 | Walker, AL | 0.5 | 40 | $15,000 | ||
| October 8 | 10:25 AM CDT | EF0 | Covington, AL | 1.9 | 50 | $50,000 | ||
| October 8 | 11:54 AM CDT | EF1 | Coffee, AL | 1.9 | 150 | $4.0 million | ||
| October 8 | 12:15 PM CDT | EF0 | Dale, AL | 1.1 | 75 | $150,000 | ||
| October 8 | 12:25 PM CDT | EF0 | Dale, AL | 2.4 | 75 | $50,000 | ||
| October 8 | 1:05 PM CDT | EF0 | Houston, AL | 4.0 | 75 | $75,000 | ||
| October 8 | 1:17 PM CDT | EF0 | Dale, AL | 0.4 | 50 | |||
| October 8 | 1:33 PM CDT | EF0 | Henry, AL | 0.4 | 75 | $75,000 | ||
| October 8 | 3:19 PM CDT | EF0 | Marion, AL | 0.0 | 20 | |||
| October 8 | 4:35 PM EDT | EF0 | Fayette, GA | 0.1 | 50 | $125,000 | ||
| October 8 | 5:24 PM EDT | EF1 | Jefferson, FL | 0.8 | 75 | $10,000 |
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.