EF0 tornado, Long Beach, Mississippi, April 14, 2018

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

April 14, 2018

Touchdown

2:13 PM CDT (19:13 UTC)

Lifted

2:14 PM CDT (19:14 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (1.0 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Harrison County

Touchdown point

30.344, -89.143

Lift-off point

30.351, -89.137

Record number

1804141313-01

3 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 70 mph.

• Youtube video shows the top of a harbor shed roof being removed by a waterspout. Shed located at the end of the middle pier. Video also shows two large masts listing rapidly to the east as the rotation moved through the piers inside the harbor.
• Youtube video shows multi-vortex tornado crossing behind a historic marker along U.S. highway 90 near St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church.
• Youtube video ends with funnel lifting and becoming less discernible in the rear of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church. Survey indicated no significant damage or little evidence of a tornado in the church yard.

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

A deep upper level low pressure and an associated cold front produced a line of thunderstorms that moved across southeast Louisiana, southern Mississippi and the adjacent coastal waters during the morning and afternoon hours of the 14th. Several reports of tornadoes were received from these storms.

A combination of YouTube storm chaser video and a NWS storm survey indicated a multiple vortex waterspout moved through Long Beach Harbor, removing the roof off of an outbuilding and toppling two tall masted sailboats. The waterspout proceeded onshore onto the beach and crossed U.S. Highway 90 near Nicholson Street, lifting in the rear of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church. Estimated maximum winds were 70 mph, path width 75 yards.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 15:43 UTC and running to 00:00 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:16 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), 94 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:12 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 2018 tornado in MississippiEvery tornado in Mississippi since 1950Warnings in force in Mississippi nowThe forecast where you are

38 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.