EF3 tornado, Castalian Spgs to Mud Camp, Tennessee, February 5, 2008

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 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF3

Date

February 5, 2008

Touchdown

10:02 PM CST (04:02 UTC)

Lifted

10:51 PM CST (04:51 UTC)

On the ground

49 minutes

Path length

50.3 miles (81.0 km)

Path width

880 yards (805 m)

Deaths

22

Injuries

63

Property damage

$28 million

Crop damage

$1,000,000

Counties

Sumner, Trousdale, Macon, Monroe and Cumberland counties

Touchdown point

36.382, -86.336

Lift-off point

36.783, -85.556

Record number

0802052202-01

The Super Severe Weather Outbreak on Feb. 5, 2008 produced supercelluar thunderstorms, well in advance of a multicell line of thunderstorms. The whole episode lasted about 6 hours. This occurred ironically while many states, including Tennessee, were participating in the Super Tuesday Primary Election. Fortunately, polls had already closed in the mid state when these tornadoes struck.

A cold front along with a strong upper level low produced a squall line that crossed central Kentucky. This set off widespread severe weather, and spawned several tornadoes.

The Castalian Springs Post Office was completely destroyed. There were 85 homes destroyed in Sumner County. ||Also in Castalian Springs, a 180 year-old structure called Wynnewood, lost the top of its structure due to the tornado. The historic log structure served as a stagecoach stop. The structure had 3 chimneys and was 142 feet long, making it the longest log structure in Tennessee.||Officials say it would take 2 years and $6 million to restore Wynnewood. It is Sumner County's sole historic landmark.||Also, 102 trees were lost in the area by the tornado.||The 11-month-old son of Kerri Stowell survived the storm and was found miraculously unharmed in a field across the street from their home in Castalian Springs. Unfortunately, Kerri Stowell was killed in the tornado. ||The tornado directly killed 7 people in Sumner County, and there was one indirect fatality when Mr. Lampkin, age 63, died of a heart attack while seeking shelter in his home. There were 14 people injured in Sumner County. ||This tornado continued into Trousdale and Macon Counties, and also into Kentucky.

Tornado ripped a gas plant and caused a gas leak and fire at the Columbia Gulf Transmission Company at 5422 Green Grove Road in Hartsville, TN. The fire eventually burned itself out. Two people were killed, and 5 people were injured. Ten homes were destroyed, and 23 homes had major damage.

Thirteen people were killed, and 44 folks were injured. Most of the fatalities occurred in Williams, just northwest of Lafayette. Also, 170 homes were destroyed, and 9 homes had major damage. ||There was one indirect fatality, a male 48 years of age, due to carbon monoxide poisoning in his home from a generator on Feb. 6, 2008.||Pres. George W. Bush toured Macon County destruction on February 8th and promised relief to individuals. ||The logging industry in Macon County was hit hard. About a million dollars worth of trees were destroyed, which will take decades to replenish. It was estimated that the tornado outbreak did 10 million dollars worth of damage to trees in the state of Tennessee.||One large brick home worth about 350 thousand dollars was poorly built. The bricks rested on cinder blocks that were not cemented. This was noticed on a storm survey.||Schools were closed for over a week, and classes did not start again until Tuesday, February 19.||FEMA spent 4.1 million dollars for housing displaced residents in trailers.

The tornado crossed into Monroe County, Kentucky from Macon County, Tennessee. About two miles west of Gamaliel, the tornado destroyed two conventional homes and two mobile homes. Thirteen residents of the four homes took shelter in the basement of one of the homes. They escaped without injury, although they were trapped in rubble for 30 minutes. Several other homes were damaged in a subdivision a mile north of Gamaliel. The tornado ripped the roof off a brick home there. It tracked across rural Monroe County, uprooting and snapping large trees. On the north side of Tompkinsville, it destroyed a large wood frame warehouse and twisted a large steel frame metal building off its foundation. A nearby well built brick home had its roof and exterior walls swept away. It also destroyed a detached three car garage.

This was the end point of a tornado that crossed into Monroe County, Kentucky from Sumner County, Tennessee. The tornado moved through a rural area of Cumberland County and lifted about three miles southwest of Marrowbone.

The deaths

22 direct deaths are recorded for this tornado, each with what Storm Data knows of it.

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

22 minutes of warning. NWS OHX issued a tornado warning for this county at 03:40 UTC, 22 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 01:20 UTC and running to 07:00 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:48 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 Nashville radar (KOHX), 67 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:02 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 2008 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

61 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 62 of them

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.