Unrated tornado, Highland Pt, Florida, January 31, 2020

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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

January 31, 2020

Touchdown

10:35 PM EST (03:35 UTC)

Lifted

10:43 PM EST (03:43 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

4.7 miles (7.5 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Monroe County

Touchdown point

25.464, -81.123

Lift-off point

25.516, -81.075

Record number

2001312135-01

A strong low pressure system over the Gulf of Mexico helped to pump moist and unstable air across South Florida during the evening and nighttime hours of January 31st, and early morning of February 1st. Strong thunderstorms developed ahead of a cold front over the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and moved east across the southern Florida peninsula. These storms spawned a tornado in the Everglades of Southwest Florida, as well as gusty winds and heavy rainfall across Southeast Florida.

The forward-propagating component of a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) advanced onshore along the Southwest Florida coast during the late-evening hours of Friday, January 31. Embedded mesovortices intermittently strengthened while |this activity moved onshore from the Gulf waters. ||One of the stronger and tighter circulations over Mainland Monroe County of South|Florida was accompanied by a well-defined Tornadic Debris Signature (TDS). This signature was characterized by a relative minimum in correlation coefficient per KAMX radar data, and corresponded with an embedded inflection in the zone of enhanced |reflectivity accompanying the QLCS that also aligned with a well-defined mesovortex. This TDS occurred over the Everglades, and was used as the foundation for this tornado report. ||The lack of conclusively surveyed damage indicators precludes the delineation |of an exact damage rating. As a result, an unknown rating has been assigned to this tornado. However, the application of established research results on the aforementioned radar data -- which provides statistical estimates of tornado probabilities and wind |speeds based on WSR-88D data and environmental information -- suggests that this tornado could have been a high-end EF0, with peak wind speeds around 80 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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 01:01 UTC and running to 05:08 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:35 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 Miami radar (KAMX), 70 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:36 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 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.