EF1 tornado, Fort Braden to Chaires Crossing, Florida, January 27, 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

January 27, 2021

Touchdown

11:30 AM EST (16:30 UTC)

Lifted

11:31 AM EST (16:31 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.4 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Leon County

Touchdown point

30.418, -84.552

Lift-off point

30.420, -84.538

Record number

2101271030-01

13 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS TAE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

• Hangar support structure for canvas door.
• 8x8 well building destroyed.
• Tree top damage reported this general vicinity per neighbor on Blountstown Hwy. Photos will be emailed.

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

Strong to severe storms impacted portions of southwest Georgia and northwest Florida during the late morning and early afternoon hours. Strong shear resulted in a tornado tracking along the south side of Tallahassee and impacting the Tallahassee airport, causing a parked plane to flip over.

A tornado initially touched down on Oscar Harvey Rd., snapping some tree tops. The tornado then did damage consistent with an EF1 rating at Blountstown Highway and Seabs Rd. Several large live oak trees were uprooted and several out buildings were destroyed. Winds peaked around 90 mph in this area. The tornado lifted over the Apalachicola National Forest just east of the property. Damage cost was estimated.

A tornado touched down just west of the Tallahassee International Airport. The preliminary touch down point is estimated by radar. Once the tornado reached the airport, it moved a 737 from its parked position, spun a CRJ plane 90 degrees and flipped a small Piper plane upside down. There was also damage to a few hangars with some small percentage of metal roofing uplifted. One hangar had large canvas doors on both sides that were shredded with the support structure for one of the canvas doors wrenched free. A bit further east on the west end of the employee lot, one hardwood tree was uprooted and fell onto two cars. A few pine trees were snapped in the immediate vicinity. This one area had damage consistent with low-end EF-1 damage. The tornado may have lifted briefly as it|tracked east-southeast across sparsely populated areas. It did snap a large branch on a tree near Crawfordville Road and Rehwinkle Drive. There were several thin pines snapped along a half mile stretch of Tram Road just west of Capital Circle SE. Many of these trees were likely weakened by Hurricane Michael. Damage was done to a few small trees along the southern periphery of the Southwood Community, along Shumard Oak Blvd. and Four Oaks Blvd. There were then sporadic instances of damage along Tram Road east of Southwood. Damage was then noted along St. Joe Rd. with several trees snapped and uprooted there. Uprooted trees and minor property damage occurred on Fox Tail Road and Bobby Godwin Lane before the tornado lifted just west the Jefferson County line. Damage cost was estimated. Most of the damage cost is due to the small Piper plane that was flipped over and eventually declared a total loss.

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

10 minutes of warning. NWS TAE issued a tornado warning for this county at 16:20 UTC, 10 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 16:45 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 15:57 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 Tallahassee radar (KTLH), 21 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 16:27 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.