Tornadoes · United States · Tennessee · 2007
EF1 tornado, Union Hill, Tennessee, November 14, 2007
This EF1 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Jackson County on November 14, 2007, touching down at 3:17 PM CST and reaching 100 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $10,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF1
- Date
- November 14, 2007
- Touchdown
- 3:17 PM CST (21:17 UTC)
- Lifted
- 3:18 PM CST (21:18 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.2 km)
- Path width
- 100 yards (91 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $10,000
- County
- Jackson County
- Touchdown point
- 36.216, -85.613
- Lift-off point
- 36.216, -85.613
- Record number
- 0711141517-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Severe weather broke out ahead of a cold front pushing into West and Middle Tennessee on the afternoon and evening of Nov. 14.
Damage to a home from the tornado. The house, located on Green Road, loss its front porch. A few trees were uprooted. One tree was snapped at its trunk.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21:45 UTC | 00:45 UTC | Flood Advisory | OHX |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:51 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 air that afternoon
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.
Nashville Metro, TN (KBNA), 12:00Z
9.3 hours before the tornado, 89 km from the path. November 14, 2007.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 143 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -43 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 506 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 34 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 34 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 244 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 188 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.5 K/km
Nashville Metro, TN (KBNA), 00:00Z
2.7 hours after it, 89 km from the path. November 15, 2007.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -81126 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 13 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 632 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 52 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 16 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 116 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 274 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 1.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.0 K/km
The radar
The Nashville radar (KOHX), 85 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:16 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21:16 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 8 Wnw Cookeville | Putnam, TN | HWY 56 GREEN RD ROOF DAMAGE JACKSON/PUTNAM COUNTY LINE |
| 21:17 UTC | TORNADO | 9 Sse Gainesboro | Jackson, TN | THE WINDS WERE IN THE EF1 RANGE AT ABOUT 100 TO 105 MPH. THE TORNADO COMPLETELY DESTROYED A PORCH IN FRONT OF A HOUSE AND TOOK PART OF A ROOF FROM A METAL STORAGE BUILDING. PATH LENGTH WAS 0.1 MILES WITH A PATH WIDTH OF |
| 22:16 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 11 Ssw Cookeville | White, TN | NUMEROUS TREES AND POWER LINES DOWN ALONG BURGESS FALLS ROAD AND SOUTHERN ROAD. STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO A MOBILE HOME ALSO OCCURRED. |
| 22:16 UTC | TORNADO | 8 Nw Sparta | White, TN | THIS TORNADO WAS RATED AS AN EF1 WITH SPEEDS AT ABOUT 110 MPH. THIS TORNADO BLEW A SINGLE WIDE TRAILER ACROSS THE ROAD AND SLAMMED IT AGAINST A HOUSE. THE HOUSE ALSO HAD CONSIDERBALE ROOF DAMAGE. JUST BEFORE THE TORNADO |
| 22:40 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 11 Ssw Cookeville | White, TN | NUMEROUS TREES AND POWER LINES DOWN...AND STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO A MOBILE HOME. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2007 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of November 14, 2007
4 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 14 | 4:28 PM EST | EF1 | Laurel, KY | 2.0 | 200 | $75,000 | ||
| November 14 | 4:16 PM CST | EF0 | White, TN | 0.7 | 100 | $20,000 | ||
| November 14 | 5:35 PM CST | EF1 | Lincoln, TN | 5.3 | 75 | $5,000 | ||
| November 14 | 7:02 PM CST | EF2 | Marion, TN | 2.0 | 200 | 9 | $2.5 million |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.