EF0 tornado, Millville, New Jersey, August 7, 2019

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

August 7, 2019

Touchdown

6:40 PM EDT (22:40 UTC)

Lifted

6:41 PM EDT (22:41 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cumberland County

Touchdown point

39.376, -75.033

Lift-off point

39.376, -75.031

Record number

1908071640-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PHI, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 93 mph.

• One narrow hardwood tree snapped with branches broken off of others.
• Damage to a field of solar panels.

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

A cold front along with a robust shortwave trough gradually approached the eastern mid-Atlantic on August 7. A pre-frontal surface trough was also in place. Ahead of the front, a warm and moist air mass built through the day. Strong instability developed, along with moderate wind shear. Convection initially developed along the pre-frontal trough. Later, a squall line associated with the front and trough combination moved through the region. Given the strong instability and adequate shear, numerous storms became severe, primarily producing damaging winds. In addition, low level shear was sufficient to help spawn a couple of brief tornadoes in New Jersey.

A weak tornado briefly touched down in Millville, NJ on |Wednesday evening. The tornado touched down in a field of solar |panels adjacent to the Millville City Sewer Department facility. |Several rows of solar panels sustained damage either from the |tornado or from the falling debris of other panels, with a couple |rows of panels largely destroyed. The tornado continued into a |wooded area next to the solar panels, snapping at least one tree and |damaging a couple others, but lifting soon after it entered the |wooded area. A twisting pattern observed in the damage to the solar |panels was sufficient to determine that the damage was caused by a |tornado. In addition, an eyewitness looking in the direction of the |damage from near the nearby Millville Executive Airport reported a |possible funnel cloud sighting as the storm passed the area. No |injuries occurred as a result of this tornado.

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 severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 18:13 UTC and running to 01:00 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. 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 Dover AFB radar (KDOX), 71 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:38 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 2019 tornado in New JerseyEvery tornado in New Jersey since 1950Warnings in force in New Jersey nowThe forecast where you are

4 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.