EF1 tornado, Shell Bluff, Georgia, November 16, 2011

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

November 16, 2011

Touchdown

5:34 PM EST (22:34 UTC)

Lifted

5:40 PM EST (22:40 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

6.5 miles (10.5 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$200,000

County

Burke County

Touchdown point

33.143, -81.910

Lift-off point

33.177, -81.805

Record number

1111161634-01

A couple of supercell thunderstorms moved throught he CSRA and produced a couple of tornadoes in Burke and Richmond counties.

NWS storm survey found a strong EF1 tornado touched down in the woods taking down numerous trees, damaging a couple of homes, a garage, a couple of outbuildings, and turned over an RV.

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

NWS Columbia, SC wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Nov 16, 1:59 PM EST, 3 hours 35 minutes earlier.

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In the hours before

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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.

Augusta/Bush Field (AGS), 25 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Charleston,SC radar (KCLX), 95 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:26 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2011 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia 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.