EF2 tornado, Punta Rassa to Whiskey Creek, Florida, January 16, 2022

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

January 16, 2022

Touchdown

7:32 AM EST (12:32 UTC)

Lifted

7:48 AM EST (12:48 UTC)

On the ground

16 minutes

Path length

7.0 miles (11.3 km)

Path width

125 yards (114 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10 million

County

Lee County

Touchdown point

26.482, -81.986

Lift-off point

26.562, -81.916

Record number

2201160632-01

13 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS TBW, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

• Ring Cam video showed bottom of skinny tornado moved east along street in front of home. Timing estimated by radar.
• Witnessed tornado (1 block south?). Could not contact. Cape Coral Emergency Management left a calling card.
• Cape Coral Emergency Management reported minor damage at this location
• Damage to palms and bushes

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

A strong cold front and line of storms moved across central and southwest Florida during the early morning producing multiple tornadoes and strong straight line wind gusts.

Iona/Fort Myers tornado. A waterspout first identified just northwest of Fort Myers Beach moved ashore as a tornado and pushed through the Iona area near Fort Myers producing EF-2 damage with peak winds estimated around 118 mph before dissipating near the Cape Coral bridge. Over 200 residences suffered damage across three separate mobile home communities (Point Breeze, Tropicana, and Century 21), with 45 destroyed, 90 sustaining major damage and another 92 with minor damage. 3 people suffered minor injuries. Damage estimates totaled around $10 million USD.

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 05:23 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 Tampa radar (KTBW), 139 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 12:29 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 2022 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.