EF0 tornado, Mt Airy to Sandyville, Maryland, June 1, 2012

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 1, 2012

Touchdown

2:48 PM EDT (18:48 UTC)

Lifted

2:49 PM EDT (18:49 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.4 miles (0.7 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Carroll County

Touchdown point

39.358, -77.139

Lift-off point

39.364, -77.137

Record number

1206011248-01

Low pressure tracked through the Ohio Valley and into the Great Lakes. The warm front associated with this system passed through our region during the first. Plenty of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean combined with strong forcing associated with the warm front, causing thunderstorms to develop. Moderate instability along with strong forcing caused some thunderstorms to become severe. ||Wind speed and direction changed rapidly with height near the warm front. This caused rotating thunderstorms, and some of them were able to produce tornadoes.

The tornado produced sporadic damage near Twin Arch road. There were about two dozen trees uprooted along with large limbs snapped.

The tornado snapped and uprooted several trees along the 2600 Block of Bird View Road. The most concentrated damage was focused along and north off Green Mill Road where numerous hardwood trees were uprooted and snapped, with some tree trunk diameters in excess of two feet. A tree fell onto a house, leaving that residence uninhabitable. ||The tornado tracked across MD State Route 140, after passing near the Finksburg Library, producing scattered tree damage.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS LWX issued a tornado warning for this county at 18:35 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 19:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:51 UTC and running to 00:01 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:31 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.

Frederick Municipal Apt (FDK), 21 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Sterling radar (KLWX), 52 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:46 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 2012 tornado in MarylandEvery tornado in Maryland since 1950Warnings in force in Maryland nowThe forecast where you are

25 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.