EF1 tornado, Whiskey Creek, Florida, January 15, 2016

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

January 15, 2016

Touchdown

11:10 AM EST (16:10 UTC)

Lifted

11:12 AM EST (16:12 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

45 yards (41 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$200,000

County

Lee County

Touchdown point

26.550, -81.913

Lift-off point

26.552, -81.910

Record number

1601151010-01

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS TBW, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• loss 10% roof, broken windows, porch ripped off
• pool/maintenance building lost roof and partial collapse of walls
• tree snapped on other side of pond
• most damage by pool bldg roof

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A low pressure system offshore of Alabama lifted a warm front across Florida during the late morning hours. The southern portion of the peninsula was in the warm sector with a very moist and unstable airmass in place. Severe thunderstorms produced areas of straight-line wind damage along with a brief tornado.

NWS Storm Survey detected EF-1 tornado damage across a small portion of Lee County. A roof was partially torn off a condo in the Whiskey Creek area. Damage was also seen to a few palm trees in the area. Four structures sustained damage.

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

18 minutes of warning. NWS TBW issued a tornado warning for this county at 15:52 UTC, 18 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 16:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 15:35 UTC and running to 17:38 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 13:00 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.

Fort Myers/Page Field (FMY), 6 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Tampa radar (KTBW), 137 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 16:09 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.

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 2016 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.