Tornadoes · United States · Florida · 2023
EF1 tornado, Bermont, Florida, April 30, 2023
This EF1 tornado ran 4.6 miles across Charlotte County on April 30, 2023, touching down at 6:34 AM EDT and reaching 50 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $50,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF1
- Date
- April 30, 2023
- Touchdown
- 6:34 AM EDT (10:34 UTC)
- Lifted
- 6:41 AM EDT (10:41 UTC)
- On the ground
- 7 minutes
- Path length
- 4.6 miles (7.4 km)
- Path width
- 50 yards (46 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $50,000
- County
- Charlotte County
- Touchdown point
- 26.920, -81.630
- Lift-off point
- 26.960, -81.570
- Record number
- 2304300434-01
The damage survey
2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS TBW, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.
- Initial touchdown point of tornado
- Total destruction of farm building used to store equipment
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
What the Weather Service recorded
A developing early morning squall line ahead of a cold front moving across the Eastern Gulf of Mexico produced an EF-1 tornado in Charlotte County along with few additional 50+ mph sub-severe wind gusts across southwest Florida.
NWS determined that a high end EF-1 tornado with 110 mph winds occurred in eastern Charlotte County, destroying a metal barn and snapping several telephone poles along with overturning a small vehicle trailer and pushing it into a tree.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
0 minutes of warning. NWS TBW issued a tornado warning for this county at 10:34 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 10:45 UTC.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 09:03 UTC and running to 12:23 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09:03 UTC | 12:23 UTC | Tornado Watch | TBW |
| 09:24 UTC | 10:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | TBW |
| 09:31 UTC | 09:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | TBW |
| 09:44 UTC | 10:00 UTC | Tornado Warning | TBW |
| 10:15 UTC | 10:45 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | TBW |
| 10:34 UTC | 10:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | TBW |
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 forecast that day
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 05:52 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 air that afternoon
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.
Tampa Bay, FL (KTBW), 00:00Z
10.6 hours before the tornado, 116 km from the path. April 30, 2023.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 328 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -80 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 683 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 797 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 38 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 22 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -41 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 35 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- -0.0
- Supercell composite
- -0.3
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.7 K/km
Tampa Bay, FL (KTBW), 12:00Z
1.4 hours after it, 116 km from the path. April 30, 2023.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 35 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -10 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 427 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 856 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 54 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 22 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -102 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 226 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- -0.0
- Supercell composite
- -0.5
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.4 K/km
The radar
The Tampa radar (KTBW), 116 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 10:33 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10:38 UTC | TORNADO | 12 E Babcock Ranch | Charlotte, FL | A BARN USED FOR STORAGE COLLAPSED DUE TO A TORNADO THAT MOVED THROUGH THE AREA. |
| 10:40 UTC | TSTM WND GST 52 | 3 Ssw Cape Coral | Lee, FL | MESONET STATION XTRP TARPON PT. |
| 10:51 UTC | TSTM WND GST 56 | 1 Nne Page Park-Pine Ma | Lee, FL | ASOS STATION KFMY FORT MYERS. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2023 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of April 30, 2023
1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 30 | 5:48 PM EDT | EF3 | Virginia Beach tornado, VA | 4.5 | 350 | $20 million |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.