EF0 tornado, Big Pine, Florida, April 5, 2013

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   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

EF0

Date

April 5, 2013

Touchdown

2:10 AM EDT (06:10 UTC)

Lifted

2:15 AM EDT (06:15 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

1.6 miles (2.5 km)

Path width

80 yards (73 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Monroe County

Touchdown point

24.635, -81.347

Lift-off point

24.649, -81.328

Record number

1304050010-01

A complex surface low pressure system extending from offshore the Mid Atlantic coast to central Florida, supported by a sharp upper trough of low pressure extending southward into the Gulf of Mexico, produced strong thunderstorms in the Florida Straits, which moved northeast across portions of the Florida Keys during the early morning hours of April 5, 2013. One thunderstorm produced a waterspout which moved ashore the extreme southern portion of Big Pine Key.

A waterspout was observed by the public, backlit by frequent lightning strikes approaching long beach estates from the west-southwest, passing to the south of the Newfound Harbor Keys. The waterspout moved ashore along the oceanside of Long Beach Drive and passed over the public observer's property, a bed-and-breakfast inn. It was at this landfall location that the tornado was at its maximum intensity and width of about 80 yards. Widespread damage to large limbs of native hardwood trees occurred, and one royal palm snapped at a level above 15 feet. A ground deck with four kayaks became airborne with the dock dropped within mangroves beyond 30 yards from the original location. A large unmounted above-ground cistern containing nearly 200 gallons of water slide just over 15 yards, knocking a large camping trailer off its front mount. Bolts securing a large grill to wood ground decking were sheared off. While numerous tables and lounge chairs were carried to the leeward side of the property, one 40-lb steel lounge chair was lifted to the edge of the roof line of the two-story residence, crushing the rain gutter, before settling in the lee of the structure. Small gravel and pea rock along the waterfront caused moderate to severe paint chipping on the oceanside of several homes. Screens including their wood frames were torn off several residences' oceanside porches, with one home losing about 40 percent of its oceanside vinyl siding. A phone line was downed along Long Beach Drive. ||The tornado continued across mud flats along the southeast edge of Coupon Bight, where only isolated damage to mangrove branches was observed. Small limbs were observed downed across Long Beach Drive between Southeast Point and U.S. Highway 1, eventually crossed through a campground just south of the Spanish Harbor Channel Bridge. Several tents including one large aluminum-framed dome tent strucutre were overturned before the tornado likely passed into Spanish Harbor Channel. The intensity of the tornado at Spanish Harbor Channel had decreased since its original landfall with estimated winds near 60 mph.

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.

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, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 04:37 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 Key West radar (KBYX), 37 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:11 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 2013 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are

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.