EF0 tornado, Bayard, Florida, January 9, 2024

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

January 9, 2024

Touchdown

4:08 PM EST (21:08 UTC)

Lifted

4:10 PM EST (21:10 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Duval County

Touchdown point

30.125, -81.532

Lift-off point

30.126, -81.528

Record number

2401091508-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 74 mph.

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

A strong pre-frontal squall line of strong to severe storms moved quickly eastward across SE GA and NE FL during the afternoon and exited off the SE GA coast into the Atlantic waters by the late afternoon and offshore of the NE FL coast by the evening. Strong dynamics with this system included a very strong low-level jet of 45-55 knots and 0-6 km shear of 50-70 knots, which along with good lapse rates aloft around 6.5 C/km and high dewpoints into the upper 60s created 500-800 J/KG of CAPE. These ingredients promoted threat of damaging wind gusts of 50-70 mph or greater, hail, and isolated tornadoes within more intense storms embedded within the Squall line.

A brief EF0 tornado with maximum winds near 80 mph produced widespread tree damage just east of Interstate 95 in the Bartram Park area of the Jacksonville Southside. The tornado touched down just west of Bartram Park around |4:08 pm, north of Arching Branch Circle, and tracked quickly |to the ENE across Woody Vine Drive and Roundleaf Drive before|dissipating across a wooded area just west of I-95 around |4:10 pm. There was some minor structure damage to gutters |and window screens, but the majority of damage included |snapped trees and large limbs blown down. There were |some trees were blown down and uprooted, indicative of a |descending rear flank downdraft.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

15 minutes of warning. NWS JAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:53 UTC, 15 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:41 UTC and running to 22:01 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:58 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.

Jacksonville Nas (NIP), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Jacksonville radar (KJAX), 43 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:07 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 2024 tornado in FloridaEvery tornado in Florida since 1950Warnings in force in Florida nowThe forecast where you are

31 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.