EF0 tornado, Beauvoir to Lorraine, Mississippi, June 21, 2017

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 21, 2017

Touchdown

8:25 AM CDT (13:25 UTC)

Lifted

8:31 AM CDT (13:31 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

4.2 miles (6.7 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Harrison County

Touchdown point

30.391, -88.971

Lift-off point

30.450, -88.989

Record number

1706210725-01

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LIX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• A group of trees displaced on high res satellite imagery.
• A few trees displaced on high res satellite imagery.
• A few trees displaced in this neighborhood on high resolution satellite imagery.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

Tropical Storm Cindy developed over the central Gulf of Mexico on June 20th and moved generally northwest for the next few days before making landfall in southwest Louisiana near the Louisiana and Texas state line. ||Cindy was an asymmetric system as it moved through the central Gulf toward southwest Louisiana, resulting in minor to moderate impacts across southern Mississippi. The storm resulted in heavy rainfall, minor storm surge flooding, and isolated damage due to strong winds. One tornado was also confirmed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.||The minimum sea level pressure of 1007.1 mb, along with the highest wind gust and highest sustained wind in southern Mississippi were all measured by the Gulfport Airport ASOS (KGPT). The highest wind gust recorded was 43 knots, or 49 mph, and the the maximum sustained wind in was 33 knots, or 38 mph. Tropical storm force winds were primarily experienced in gusts as squalls moved through the area. The winds did cause isolated minor damage to trees, roofs, and power lines. ||A storm tide of generally 2 to 4 feet occurred along the Gulf Coast from Harrison County through Jackson County. The highest measured storm tide was 4.06 ft MHHW at a National Ocean Service gauge at Bay Waveland in Hancock County. The elevated tides resulted in minor to moderate flooding mainly of low lying land, as well as some beach erosion. ||One long lived rain band resulted in very heavy rainfall across eastern Harrison County and western Jackson County. In these areas, many places reported 13 to 17 inches of rain, with a maximum of 18.74 inches reported by a CoCoRaHS observer in Ocean Springs. Elsewhere across the Mississippi coast, widespread rainfall totals of 7 to 10 inches were common. The heavy rainfall led to minor to moderate river flooding as well as flash flooding.||One tornado was confirmed in Harrison County when a waterspout came ashore from the Mississippi Sound near Biloxi.

A tornadic waterspout came onshore near Beauvoir Rd and Beach Blvd in Biloxi, MS causing damage to tree limbs and fencing and breaking a single window. It moved almost due north-northwest and continued to cause damage mainly to trees. It downed a few trees and a power line between Rich Ave and Popps Ferry Rd. The tornado continued northward causing sporadic minor damage and lifted south of Woolmarket Rd. Peak damage occurred near Beauvoir Rd and was estimated to be caused by around 85 mph (EF-0) winds. Based on KLIX radar analysis, it's possible the initial tornado occluded northwest over Big Lake and a brief, second EF-0 touched down and caused tree damage in Sunkist Country Club and near Oaklawn Rd. This would corroborate reports of two tornadoes being observed per public reports.

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

14 minutes of warning. NWS LIX issued a tornado warning for this county at 13:11 UTC, 14 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 13:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 03:24 UTC and running to 15:00 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 12:55 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 Mobile radar (KMOB), 76 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 13:26 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 2017 tornado in MississippiEvery tornado in Mississippi since 1950Warnings in force in Mississippi nowThe forecast where you are

8 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.