EF0 tornado, Franklin Spgs to Chuckery Corners, New York, July 26, 2011

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

July 26, 2011

Touchdown

1:03 PM EDT (17:03 UTC)

Lifted

1:04 PM EDT (17:04 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Oneida County

Touchdown point

43.030, -75.340

Lift-off point

43.030, -75.330

Record number

1107261103-01

A trough of low pressure moved through the the region, with sufficient moisture to produce showers and thunderstorms across central New York. Some of the storms became severe, with reports of damaging winds and large hail. One thunderstorm produced two brief, weak tornado touchdowns.

A tornado briefly touched down just north of College Hill Road, about a mile west of the Hamilton College campus. Several trees were snapped off and one large tree was uprooted. The tornado lifted as it crossed College Hill Road before briefly touching down again just south in a field south of Crane Farm. Video submitted to the NWS via email and also posted by WKTV-TV in Utica helped aide in the determination of the tornado touchdown. ||The tornado continued on the ground before lifting near Peters Lane. Damage was still mostly toward the east, but the Kirkland Highway Supervisor confirmed that some of the brush in this area was pointing in the opposite direction.||The combination of eyewitness reports and video at the two damage locations helped aide in this confirmation. It appears that after these two brief touchdowns near college Hill Road, the tornado lifted up and did not touch down again until near Kellogg Street just east of Route 12.

A tornado briefly touched down along Kellogg Street, just west of State Route 12. Several large hardwood trees were either uprooted or snapped. The downed trees just on the north side of Kellogg Street were pointing toward the west to southwest, while the storm motion and most other damage were oriented toward the east.||As judged from the observed damage patterns and eyewitness accounts, the tornado appeared to be on the ground for a very short period of time, likely less than a minute.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS BGM issued a tornado warning for this county at 16:51 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 17:15 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 15:30 UTC and running to 19:26 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 16:36 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 Ft Drum radar (KTYX), 85 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:04 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 2011 tornado in New YorkEvery tornado in New York since 1950Warnings in force in New York nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.