EF0 tornado, (Fll)Ft Laudrdl Intl to Pembroke Pines, Florida, April 12, 2023

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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. 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

EF0

Date

April 12, 2023

Touchdown

9:40 PM EDT (01:40 UTC)

Lifted

9:44 PM EDT (01:44 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.8 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Broward County

Touchdown point

26.055, -80.132

Lift-off point

26.059, -80.160

Record number

2304121940-01

17 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MFL, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• Limited damage indicators. May have been at tree level.
• Carport lifted. Small part of roof peeled back
• Siding torn off on west side of home. Greater than 50% roof loss
• Significant uplift of roof.

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

A nearly stationary front began to move slowly northward across South Florida on April 12th, focusing deep moisture over the region. An mid to upper level low pressure over the NW Gulf of Mexico and an upper level jet stream over the eastern Gulf of Mexico contributed to providing the necessary atmospheric forcing for areas of persistent heavy rain and strong thunderstorms across most of SE Florida.

A small tornado began in Dania Beach on NE 6th Court just south of Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, causing mainly fence and tree damage to the surrounding neighborhood. The tornado skipped as the parent storm moved WNW across Federal Highway, with the next area of tornado damage noted at a church on NW 5th Avenue and 3rd Terrace where the west edge of the roof peeled and blew off to the east, and the front door facing north was blown in. Extensive tree damage was noted westward along Old Griffin Road next to the Dania Cut-Off Canal, then damaged at least half a dozen mobile homes in the Ocean Waterway community west of Bryan Road and east of I-95. The mobile home damage was in the form of peeled roofs, metal siding torn off, and damaged power poles. ||The tornado was rated on the high end of the EF-0 scale based primarily on damage in the mobile home park. A tornadic debris signature (TDS) was also noted on radar with this tornado. Damage totals are estimates.

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.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:52 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), 56 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:42 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 2023 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.