EF1 tornado, Woodbine Jct, New Jersey, July 9, 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 9, 2021

Touchdown

2:40 AM EDT (06:40 UTC)

Lifted

2:42 AM EDT (06:42 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.9 miles (1.5 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cape May County

Touchdown point

39.236, -74.793

Lift-off point

39.237, -74.810

Record number

2107090040-01

Tropical Storm Elsa affected much of the coastal mid-Atlantic on the night of July 8 and into the morning of the 9th. The storm maintained much of its intensity despite a long track over land as it began to interact with a mid-latitude trough. Overall, impacts across the mid-Atlantic were fairly minimal. One to three inches of rain, locally a little higher, fell across a large area, but produced little in the way of flooding impacts. With the center tracking near the coast, tropical storm force wind conditions were limited, and confined mainly to immediate coastal areas. Elsa did produce a couple of short-lived tornadoes over eastern New Jersey. The storm was fast moving, and departed into New England a few hours after daybreak on the 9th.

An EF-1 tornado touched down near the entrance of the Ocean World |Condominium complex in Woodbine where it uprooted two cedar trees. |The tornado completely destroyed a picnic shelter at the complex's |park area and spread debris consisting of structural remains and |patio furniture hundreds of feet. The roof of the picnic shelter was |dropped into the nearby swimming pool. The tornado caused considerable |structural damage to the complex's office and recreation building. |The front door was blown out and ripped off of the structure and an |exterior wall was pushed outward several inches, but did not |completely collapse. The complex's entrance sign was also blown over |and another nearby cedar tree was uprooted. The tornado continued |westward where it snapped a few trees along Ash Drive and |Freidriechstadt Avenue. The tornado continued through a wooded area |then uprooted a few trees near the intersection of Dehirsch Avenue |and Joffe Drive. At the same intersection, several tree limbs were |snapped off and sections of residential vinyl fencing was blown |over. The tornado continued across an open area then ended near the |intersection of Heilprin Avenue and Ocean Drive where it snapped |part of a pine tree off onto a house.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:07 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), 72 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:37 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.