EF1 tornado, Starke, Florida, December 8, 2021

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

December 8, 2021

Touchdown

5:20 PM EST (22:20 UTC)

Lifted

5:22 PM EST (22:22 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Bradford County

Touchdown point

29.941, -82.110

Lift-off point

29.939, -82.102

Record number

2112081620-01

13 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

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

A prefrontal squall line passed across northeast Florida during the afternoon and early evening hours. A few bowing segments developed within the broader line of thunderstorms and one of these features generated a brief tornado as it tracked east-southeastward around 30 MPH across the Starke FL area. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued for the area with potential for brief and isolated tornadoes.||The synoptic environment had strong shear, but an inversion near 500 mb limited updraft stretching and kept convection relatively shallow as the squall line moved across the area. During the late afternoon, a bowing segment coincided with a nose of low level moisture (dew pt rose to near 70 deg) as the convection moved east across Bradford county near Starke. This is where there was enough low level instability and shear to support a mesovortex tornado along the leading edge of the bow.

Numerous hard and softwood trees where snapped and some fell onto homes causing structural damage across the ESE of Starke. from Thomson Street to Wilson Road near the Shands Starke Medical Center. One home was shifted off of its foundation due to a large tree falling onto it. Metal roof panels were stripped away from a canopy.

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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:25 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 Jacksonville radar (KJAX), 72 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:18 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 2021 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are

1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.