EF0 tornado, Pine Island, Florida, June 18, 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

June 18, 2023

Touchdown

11:10 AM EDT (15:10 UTC)

Lifted

11:11 AM EDT (15:11 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Lee County

Touchdown point

26.609, -82.115

Lift-off point

26.608, -82.115

Record number

2306180910-01

1 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 67 mph.

• A recently constructed metal freezer was damaged by a brief touchdown. No other visible damage in the area.

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

A supercell embedded within a line of thunderstorms associated with a mesoscale convective complex moving across southwest Florida produces a brief tornado on Pine Island in Lee County, while flooding reported around Cape Coral in Lee County.

A virtual survey using several photos captured from the area suggests that the only damage was done to a recently-constructed metal outdoor freezer. This freezer was complete, properly secured, and was made of aluminum and insulated with Styrofoam. |While some fence damage was noted, this damage could not be reliably attributed to the tornado, given a lack of nearby tree damage and little-to-debris. Imagery from the area also shows some damage to this fence before the tornado took place. As such, the |tornado was on the ground for approximately 27 feet (or 0.005 mi) and spent only a few brief seconds on the ground before lifting again.

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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 12:34 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), 125 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 15:10 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

20 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.