EF0 tornado, Raleigh, Mississippi, March 10, 2016

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

March 10, 2016

Touchdown

4:04 PM CST (22:04 UTC)

Lifted

4:07 PM CST (22:07 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (2.0 km)

Path width

80 yards (73 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$20,000

County

Smith County

Touchdown point

32.028, -89.541

Lift-off point

32.037, -89.523

Record number

1603101604-01

As high pressure over the East Coast refused to move, a storm system approached the ArkLaMiss from the west and stalled just to the west of the region on March 7th. While warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico filtered north and encompassed the region, a series of potent upper level disturbances began lifting northeast across the Lower Mississippi River Valley. This set the stage for multiple rounds of torrential rains that fell almost continuously across the ArkLaMiss from March 8th through March 12th. These prolonged torrential rains resulted in widespread flash flooding and river flooding across the region, with numerous area rivers reaching moderate and major flood stages. Floodwaters damaged numerous homes, businesses, and closed many primary and secondary roads across the region, with some secondary roads washed out. ||In addition, one weak tornado developed on March 10th as a line of storms began to finally push to the east over central Mississippi. This weak EF-0 tornado touched down just west of Raleigh, snapping a few trees and causing minor damage to a metal roof of an outbuilding. ||As the storm system finally exited the region late on the 12th, another fast moving, compact storm system followed in its wake during the evening of March 13th. This system brought another round of heavy rain to the Delta region, in addition to hail and damaging straight line winds. Two tornadoes were spawned by this system as well, including an EF-0 tornado that touched down near Cleveland in Bolivar County.

The tornado began just off of Highway 540 west of Raleigh snapping a few trees. It continued across Court House Square, where it took part of a metal roof off of an outbuilding. The tornado ended near State Highway 35 where it snapped some limbs off of a tree. The maximum estimated winds were 80 mph.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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.

The Jackson/Brandon,MS radar (KDGX), 51 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:01 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 2016 tornado in MississippiEvery tornado in Mississippi since 1950Warnings in force in Mississippi nowThe forecast where you are

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.