EF0 tornado, Columbia, Mississippi, February 20, 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

February 20, 2014

Touchdown

7:48 PM CST (01:48 UTC)

Lifted

7:49 PM CST (01:49 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$15,000

County

Marion County

Touchdown point

31.253, -89.770

Lift-off point

31.260, -89.767

Record number

1402201948-01

During the afternoon of the 20th and into the early morning hours of the 21st, a large part of the central United States experienced severe weather. Across central Mississippi, severe weather was more sporadic, but portions of the area did see the brunt of the strongest activity.||Portions of the area experienced a combination of damaging winds, hail, a few tornadoes and flash flooding. Damaging winds were more common along the US Highway 82 corridor as the line of storms pushed east. Three weak tornadoes occurred, two in Jones County and the other in Marion County. The most impactful severe weather was from flash flooding as three to six inches of rain fell within a swath extending from Brookhaven to Laurel to Hattiesburg to Columbia. Multiple roads flooded as a result, with the worst flooding outside of West Hattiesburg in Lamar County. Water rescues took place in this area, and about 20 homes had significant water in them.

Multiple trees were downed or snapped along Highway 98 at Friendship Church Road in a manner consistent with tornadic damage. Maximum wind speeds were estimated at 75 mph.

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

36 minutes of warning. NWS JAN issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:12 UTC, 36 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:08 UTC and running to 06:18 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:00 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.

Columbia (0R0), 6 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

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

33 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.