F2 tornado, Barnesville to Summertown, Tennessee, April 20, 1996

1. F040 to 72 mph

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

2. F173 to 112 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mphthis tornado

   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. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 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

F2

Date

April 20, 1996

Touchdown

6:45 AM CDT (11:45 UTC)

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

12

Property damage

$1.3 million

County

Lawrence County

Touchdown point

35.430, -87.380

Lift-off point

35.430, -87.380

Record number

145

A strong line of thunderstorms entered middle Tennesee Saturday morning, April 20. The storms moved from northwest to southeast. Some of these storms produced tornadoes, but a significant part of the damage occurred from straight line winds. Many homes...mobile homes and businesses were damaged. Damage estimates from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) was placed at 1.25 million dollars across middle Tennessee during this storm event. The tornado started at Barnesville and then went back up as a funnel cloud. It touched down again at Summertown, Waco and Cornersville. Areas east of Cornersville toward Bell Buckle received straight line wind damage. The distance from Barnesville to Cornersville is about 33 miles. Lengths and widths are estimated at Barnesville, Summertown, Waco and Cornersville. Cornersville was the hardest hit.An eyewitness saw the funnel come down and take the roof off a basement house about 1/2 mile south of Barnesville on Barnesville Rd. The tornado went up as a funnel cloud but came down again later as a tornado at Summertown and did some damaged to 25 homes...2 severe. Trees were uprooted, including a large oak tree and a cherry tree with a diameter of 12 to 14 inches. The tornado went up as a funnel cloud, and touched down briefly at Waco, in Giles county. The tornado damaged a brick structure that was used as a store. The building lost its roof and most of its walls. A mobile home was leveled across the street. Straight line winds appeared to have damaged a cabinet and wood shop business at the junction of highway 31 and highway 129. Storm damage estimate for Giles county is about $400,000. The tornado came down again for the final time at Cornersville, at 0615 CST, and was on the ground for an estimated 1.5 miles. Its width was estimated about 1/4 mile. The tornado started at 1.5 miles northwest of the junction of U.S. Route 31A and Coleman Rd. or 1.3 miles southwest of Cornersville. The tornado damage ends near the junction of Coleman Rd. and U.S. Route 31A. The tornado demolished a mobile home park. 7 mobile homes were totally destroyed and 10 others damage. 7 people were injured in the mobile home park, one critically. Another person was injured in Marshall county. 2 high tension towers were bent in half and telephone poles were snapped along Coleman Rd. The Cornersville School auditorium was damaged, but it was not from the tornado.There were 2 injuries in Coffee county and 2 injured in Bedford county, for a total of 12 injuries from the storm. TEMA estimates of the number of homes, mobile homes and businesses that were destroyed or sustained severely damage from the tornado and the straight line winds for the following counties are in the respective order: Marshall County...5, 10, 14Lawrence County...10, 1. and zero.Coffee County...4, 10, 1.Giles County...6, 2, 2.Bedford County...0, 4, 0.

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

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:43 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.

Columbia (MRC), 23 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Nashville radar (KOHX), 117 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 11:42 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 1996 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

20 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.