EF0 tornado, Hypoluxo, Florida, April 17, 2020

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 17, 2020

Touchdown

10:53 PM EDT (02:53 UTC)

Lifted

10:55 PM EDT (02:55 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.3 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Palm Beach County

Touchdown point

26.558, -80.062

Lift-off point

26.569, -80.058

Record number

2004172053-01

30 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MFL, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 76 mph.

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

A warm front moving north across South Florida, along with a warm and moist local atmosphere, provided support for the development of thunderstorms. Several outflow boundary collisions from nearby storms helped to produce a short-lived tornado in Palm Beach County.

NWS storm survey team found damage consistent with an EF-0 tornado in the San Castle neighborhood in Palm Beach County. This area is east of I-95 tucked right between the Boynton Beach and Hypoluxo city limits. Track began near Miner Road and Summit Road, and tracked N-NE between Summit and Grove Road, with the heaviest damage along Brown Road. The track then shifted east of Summit Road from Wilkinson Road to Overlook Road where it lifted near Monroe Boulevard. ||Damage consisted of multiple downed tree limbs and minor damage to home roofs and fences.

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. The outlook in force was issued at 00:58 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 live radar over the trackEvery 2020 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.