EF1 tornado, Springfield, Florida, March 9, 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 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

March 9, 2022

Touchdown

6:15 AM CST (12:15 UTC)

Lifted

6:17 AM CST (12:17 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.4 miles (0.7 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Bay County

Touchdown point

30.151, -85.566

Lift-off point

30.151, -85.559

Record number

2203090615-01

22 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 95 mph.

• Multiple manufactured homes with roof and siding damage. Photos courtesy FDEM.
• Two broken windows on opposite side of Fire Captains office.
• Roof trusses tossed in opposite directions with some in yard and some in street.

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

A cold front crossed the area during the early morning hours of March 9th. Sufficient instability and wind shear resulted in a few tornadoes and wind damage across the Florida panhandle.

Another short-track tornado touched down in Callaway, FL just east of North Star Avenue at the location of the Callaway Sheriff's office and Fire Dept. The tornado blew out two windows at the sheriff's office and tumbled a large container several times before it eventually stopped across a small lagoon. A deputy reported his patrol car being shifted by the winds while he was in the car and parked at the SO. The tornado then lifted a substantial portion of a well-built garage or outbuilding tossing some into the yard and others into the adjoining apartment complex in the opposite direction. The apartment complex sustained relatively minor damage. One shed was slightly shifted, a lone tree snapped, and one hand railing for an exterior staircase. The most substantial damage occurred at a mobile home park east of the apartment complex and immediately east of Nelle St. Several single and double-wide manufactured homes were shifted off their cinder block foundation by a couple of feet. Many suffered substantial roof damage as well. One utility pole was snapped near its base. The tornado lifted after exiting the mobile home park before reaching Sukoshi Drive.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 07:25 UTC and running to 14:54 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 05:55 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.

Panama City Beach - Drone Runway (TDR), 9 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

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

7 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.