Tornadoes · United States · Maryland · 2016

EF0 tornado, West Ocean City to Ocean Pines, Maryland, August 1, 2016

Name: EF0 tornado, West Ocean City to Ocean Pines, Maryland, August 1, 2016
Start: 2016-08-01T20:40:00.000Z
End: 2016-08-01T20:45:00.000Z
Location: West Ocean City to Ocean Pines, Maryland

From West Ocean City to Ocean Pines, this EF0 tornado ran 3.8 miles across Worcester County on August 1, 2016, touching down at 4:40 PM EDT and reaching 50 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $75,000 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 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
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: EF0
Date: August 1, 2016
Touchdown: 4:40 PM EDT (20:40 UTC)
Lifted: 4:45 PM EDT (20:45 UTC)
On the ground: 5 minutes
Path length: 3.8 miles (6.1 km)
Path width: 50 yards (46 m)
Deaths: 0
Injuries: 0
Property damage: $75,000
County: Worcester County
Touchdown point: 38.340, -75.090
Lift-off point: 38.390, -75.060
Record number: 1608011440-01

What the Weather Service recorded

Scattered severe thunderstorms associated with a frontal boundary produced damaging winds, large hail, and a tornado across portions of the Lower Maryland Eastern Shore.

A waterspout developed in Assawoman Bay, came ashore near the Route 50 and Philadelphia Avenue Intersection, and resulted in structural damage to several businesses in the surrounding area. A large supply container for the town of Ocean City was overturned and moved down the adjacent beach.

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

The warnings

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

Issued (UTC)	Expired	Product	Office
19:55 UTC	21:00 UTC	Marine Warning	AKQ
20:55 UTC	22:00 UTC	Marine Warning	AKQ

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 21:41 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.

Wallops Is Stn, VA (KWAL), 12:00Z

8.7 hours before the tornado, 56 km from the path. August 1, 2016.

Skew-T log-p

Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.

Hodograph

The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.

Mixed-layer CAPE: 392 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN: -97 J/kg
Surface CAPE: 2549 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL: 1089 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear: 25 kt
0-1 km bulk shear: 5 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity: 20 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity: 95 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter: 0.0
Supercell composite: 0.5
0-3 km lapse rate: 5.9 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

Wallops Is Stn, VA (KWAL), 00:00Z

3.3 hours after it, 56 km from the path. August 2, 2016.

Skew-T log-p

Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.

Hodograph

Mixed-layer CAPE: 1641 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN: -19 J/kg
Surface CAPE: 2405 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL: 899 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear: 35 kt
0-1 km bulk shear: 19 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity: 96 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity: 108 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter: 0.8
Supercell composite: 4.9
0-3 km lapse rate: 6.5 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

The radar

The Dover AFB radar (KDOX), 60 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:38 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
20:38 UTC	MARINE TSTM WIND 61	1 Ssw Ocean City	Anz650, MD	53 KT AT OCEAN CITY BUOY.
20:40 UTC	HAIL 1	Ocean City	Worcester, MD	.
20:40 UTC	TORNADO	1 Se West Ocean City	Worcester, MD	STORM SURVEY CONCLUDED DAMAGE CONSISTENT WITH AN EF0 TORNADO. MINOR STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO RESTAURANT AND ADJACENT ROADWAY (US-50) AT PHILADELPHIA AVE. LARGE EQUIPMENT STORAGE BIN OVERTURNED AND DISPLACED DOWN THE BEACH. .
20:42 UTC	HAIL 1.5	1 Se West Ocean City	Worcester, MD	.
20:42 UTC	TORNADO	1 Se West Ocean City	Worcester, MD	STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO RESTAURANT AND ADJACENT ROADWAY. LARGE EQUIPMENT STORAGE BIN OVERTURNED AND DISPLACED DOWN THE BEACH. STORM SURVEY IS ONGOING, AND FURTHER DETAILS WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE LATER TODAY.
20:43 UTC	TSTM WND GST 49	Ocean City Municipality	Worcester, MD	ASOS STATION OCEAN CITY MUNICIPAL AIRPORT /OXB/.
21:26 UTC	FLOOD	1 Sse West Ocean City	Worcester, MD	2.0 TO 2.5 FEET ON MANY ROADS IN WEST OCEAN CITY NEAR ROUTE 50 BRIDGE...OBSERVED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

This ground now

The live radar over the track Every 2016 tornado in Maryland Every tornado in Maryland since 1950 Warnings in force in Maryland now The forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of August 1, 2016

1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Date	Time	Rating	Where	Path (mi)	Width (yd)	Deaths	Injuries	Damage
August 1	4:21 PM CDT	EF0	Saunders, NE	0.0	15

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.