EF0 tornado, Mize, Mississippi, December 15, 2014

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

December 15, 2014

Touchdown

5:02 PM CST (23:02 UTC)

Lifted

5:06 PM CST (23:06 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

1.5 miles (2.5 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$6,000

County

Smith County

Touchdown point

31.828, -89.617

Lift-off point

31.837, -89.594

Record number

1412151702-01

During the afternoon of Dec 15, just enough ingredients came together to support isolated severe storms ahead of a cold front. Across the Lower Mississippi River Valley, peak heating contributed to decent instability in the developing warm sector in advance of the front. Sufficient low level wind shear and strong winds aloft were also in place as a decent upper low was located to our north. This helped to support organized thunderstorm activity along with a few rotating mini-supercell storms.||A long lived, persistent, storm tracked across the southern counties (roughly a Bude to Taylorsville, Mississippi line) and produced a few funnel clouds and one instance of a brief tornado (southwest of Mize). Along the actual front, a broken line of storms developed. One cell along the line developed some weak rotation and produced a brief tornado near Bovina, Mississippi. Activity weakened during the evening as it pushed east and out of the area around midnight.

This weak tornado touched down near the intersection of county roads 61 and 50, where some large limbs were snapped. The tornado continued along country road 50, causing some roof damage to a chicken house and ended near the intersection of county roads 50 and 50A. Here, it snapped a few more large limbs. The maximum sustained winds were 75 mph.

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

21 minutes of warning. NWS JAN issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:41 UTC, 21 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:45 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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.

Pine Belt Regional Awos (PIB), 48 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Jackson/Brandon,MS radar (KDGX), 61 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:02 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 2014 tornado in MississippiEvery tornado in Mississippi since 1950Warnings in force in Mississippi nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.