EF1 tornado, Chatsworth to Barnegat Light, New Jersey, July 29, 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 29, 2021

Touchdown

8:42 PM EDT (00:42 UTC)

Lifted

8:51 PM EDT (00:51 UTC)

On the ground

9 minutes

Path length

6.5 miles (10.5 km)

Path width

250 yards (229 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Ocean and Burlington counties

Touchdown point

39.775, -74.397

Lift-off point

39.795, -74.277

Record number

2107291842-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PHI, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The highest wind the damage implies is 74 mph.

• Uncertain if this is from the tornado

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

A strong shortwave trough moved east-southeastward out of the Great Lakes region on July 29. An associated, strengthening surface low also tracked out of the Great Lakes and into upstate New York. A warm front associated with this low moved through most of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania during the late morning and early afternoon hours. This front, combined with the remains of widespread convection to the west from the previous overnight and morning hours, brought significant cloud cover to the eastern mid-Atlantic for much of the day on the 29th. This was mainly in the form of mid and high level cloud cover, however, and temperatures still warmed to near seasonal levels behind the warm front, allowing moderate to strong instability to build. Meanwhile, the robust surface and upper level disturbances approaching the region brought both strong forcing and unseasonably strong wind shear. By mid-afternoon, an unusually favorable convective environment existed over eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.||The result of this environment was a rare tornado outbreak across the area. Initially, during the mid-afternoon hours, mixed convective modes over east-central Pennsylvania produced a couple instances of damaging wind and brief tornadoes as storms attempted to overcome cloud cover and some light stratiform rain in the area. With time, as storms moved into better instability and a less contaminated environment over far eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, they took on more supercellular structures. Multiple cyclic supercells would go on to produce several tornadoes, three of them strong (EF2+) over eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Convection persisted past the sunset hour with little to no loss in intensity due to the strong forcing. The only thing that put an end to the outbreak was the coastline, as storms moved offshore towards 9 to 10PM local time. Even offshore, one supercell continued to exhibit strong rotation and likely produced a strong waterspout for tens of miles over the Atlantic.||Fortunately, and miraculously, no serious injuries or loss of life occurred as a result of this outbreak. With the passage of a cold front late on the evening of the 29th, cooler, drier, and much less active weather would grace the region for several days as clean-up efforts began.

A tornado touched down on the evening of July 29 in a heavily |forested area in the eastern portion of Woodland Twp in southern |New Jersey. The start location is estimated to be between |Stevenson Rd, where survey crews found no damage, and Whiting Rd |about a mile and a half away, where tree damage was observed. The |estimate, also aided by radar, places the start just west of the |border of Burlington and Ocean Counties, though no damage was directly observed in Burlington County due to accessibility issues. After touching down, the |tornado moved in an east-northeasterly direction and quickly crossed the Ocean County border.

The tornado estimated to have touched down in the New Jersey pine barrens over Burlington County moved into Ocean County, where damage was first observed. The bulk of the damage consisted of large snapped and uprooted pine and spruce |trees with a few red maple trees. Some of the heaviest damage occurred on Old|Cedar Bridge Rd near the Cedar Bridge Tavern Historic Site. The |tornado crossed Route 72 before moving through over a mile of |inaccessible forest land. Tree damage was found again along Jones |Rd. From there the tornado moved into the Wells Mills area where |the path of tree damage continued. A number of snapped trees and |large limbs were found in the area of Wells Mills County Park. The|tornado path appeared to end a few hundred yards east of this |location. The degree of tree damage along the middle portion of |the track was consistent with a higher end EF1 tornado.

The same supercell which produced a tornado in the New Jersey |Pine Barrens cycled and produced another tornado in far eastern |Ocean County. The tornado touched down near the immediate western |shore of Barnegat Bay. At least one building near Bay Beach off |Bayshore Dr sustained roofing damage. The tornado then moved over |Barnegat Bay as a waterspout. It came ashore in the area of High |Bar Harbor in Long Beach Twp.||The most severe damage was noted to a house on the corner of |Antioch Rd and Arnold Blvd. This house was facing west-southwest, |and had its entire roof structure lifted off and tossed one to two|houses to the east. The house walls remained standing but most of|the doors and windows on the east and west sides of the house |were completely blown out, with significant damage to the inside |of the house. A two- by-four from an adjacent house impaled the |wall on the west side of the house. Eight people were in the house|at the time the tornado hit, but they were able to take shelter |in an interior closet, with only minor injuries sustained. In |addition, on the north side of the house, a car in the driveway |was pushed sideways several feet and their boat flipped into their|neighbor's boat. The boat's trailer was tossed about 50 feet into|a house just to the east. The degree and orientation of damage |was consistent with tornadic winds of 115 to 120 mph, which is EF2|intensity.||Continuing east-northeast, about a dozen homes on the south side |of Arnold Blvd sustained significant uplift of roof material, |siding damage or removal, collapse of porch, patio, and sunroom |structures, and blown out windows. Several large trees were |uprooted and lay pointing to the east-northeast, as well as downed|power poles. ||The tornado moved east or slightly north of east from Arnold |Blvd, over an open salt marsh, before intersecting a few houses on|the corner of Collier Rd and Sunset Blvd. The most significant |damage was to a house on the northwest corner of Collier and |Sunset, which sustained siding damage, partial roof removal, |blowout of the storm surge walls on the basement level of the |elevated structure, and a large tree uprooted and laying to the |east-northeast. Power poles and large trees were downed on Sunset |Blvd, adjacent to the High Bar Harbor Yacht Club. There was damage|to several boats in the yacht club marina, but this was mainly |due to lofted debris being tossed into the marina. The circulation|then moved into the cove east of the marina. However, no further |significant damage was noted on the east side of the cover in |Barnegat Light, indicating the tornado had likely lifted. This is |corroborated by radar data which showed a weakening of the |circulation and a likely dissipation before it crossed into the |open Atlantic.

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 00:39 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:48 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:25 UTC and running to 00:52 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 19:53 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), 19 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:43 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

36 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.