EF1 tornado, Jobstown Arpt to Jacobstown, New Jersey, July 17, 2021

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

July 17, 2021

Touchdown

10:25 PM EDT (02:25 UTC)

Lifted

10:36 PM EDT (02:36 UTC)

On the ground

11 minutes

Path length

7.8 miles (12.5 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Burlington County

Touchdown point

40.051, -74.722

Lift-off point

40.079, -74.580

Record number

2107172025-01

A warm and very humid air mass was in place over the mid-Atlantic on July 17. A warm front which had sagged south into the region on the night of the 16th pushed back to the north on the morning of the 17th. Meanwhile, a cold front slowly approached by evening, with a pre-frontal surface trough ahead of it. The presence of multiple synoptic and mesoscale boundaries led to a highly complex convective evolution. Several areas and multiple rounds of convection affected the eastern mid-Atlantic over about a 12 hour period from early afternoon on the 17th to a little after midnight on the 18th. With shear falling in the weak to moderate range, convection mainly took the form of multi-cellular and linear clusters, though some semi-discrete supercellular structures were noted at times. A number of storms became severe with damaging wind. A weak tornado was confirmed in Burlington County, NJ in association with a line of thunderstorms in the later evening. Areas of heavy rain and flash flooding also occurred due to the widespread and at times slow moving nature of the convection. Eventually, by later in the night, the approach of the cold front and significant overturning of the atmosphere from the day's convection caused remaining activity to weaken and shift offshore.

A narrow, discontinuous, path of tree damage began just east of |the Route 206 and Columbus-Jobstown Road intersection. This is 1 |mile northeast of the Burlington County Fairgrounds. Significant |tree damage was observed in a neighborhood north of Columbus-|Jobstown Road. From there, several large limbs were snapped off on|Island Road. One tree was uprooted and one was snapped on |Juliustown-Georgetown Road. An additional tree was snapped on NJ |Route 68. Numerous large limbs were blown on powerlines on Monmouth|Road near Tilghmans Corner. Scattered tree damage was observed in|Jacobstown in North Hanover Township. The tornado dissipated |before the Ocean County line.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS PHI issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:22 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:45 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:15 UTC and running to 03:00 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 00:54 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 Philadelphia radar (KDIX), 24 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:26 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 2021 tornado in New JerseyEvery tornado in New Jersey since 1950Warnings in force in New Jersey nowThe forecast where you are

1 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.