EF1 tornado, Autryville to Mt Pleasant, North Carolina, May 23, 2017

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

May 23, 2017

Touchdown

4:38 PM EDT (20:38 UTC)

Lifted

5:17 PM EDT (21:17 UTC)

On the ground

39 minutes

Path length

13.7 miles (22.1 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$1.5 million

County

Sampson County

Touchdown point

35.000, -78.640

Lift-off point

35.047, -78.404

Record number

1705231438-01

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS RAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

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

A significant impulse ejected northeast, moving atop a quasi-stationary wavy frontal zones that extended from the Deep South into the Carolinas. A surface wave and|a 40 to 50 kt low-level jet accompanied the impulse. A low-topped supercell developed|along the surface wave and produced an EF-1 tornado in Sampson County. The EF-1 tornado produced non-continuous damage along a 13 mile path from Autryville to just NE of Salemburg.

At approximately 4:38 PM EDT, a tornado touched down just west of |highway 24 on the west side of Autryville, where it produced tree |damage as well as destroying one mobile home and taking the roof off |of another near Mills Street and East Clinton Street. The tornado |then briefly lifted before descending again near the Autryville |Volunteer Fire Department, which was severely damaged as the garage doors |blew in, and ripped a large portion of roof off. Two of their fire engines and one fire truck were covered in rubble. The tornado lifted then touched down again on the northeast side of Autryville, near Johnson Tanner Lane, where several homes were |damaged. The tornado lifted again, doing little additional damage until touching down again near McGee Church Road, where it destroyed a vacant turkey house and snapped numerous trees and power poles. It then dissipated at approximately 5:17 PM EDT. There were no fatalities and only one minor injury reported.

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

NWS Raleigh, NC wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at May 23, 3:20 PM EDT, 1 hour 18 minutes earlier.

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In the hours before

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Clinton (CTZ), 15 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Raleigh/Durham radar (KRAX), 71 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:40 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2017 tornado in North CarolinaEvery tornado in North Carolina since 1950Warnings in force in North Carolina nowThe forecast where you are

11 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.