Tornadoes · United States · Tennessee · 2009
EF0 tornado, Dunlap, Tennessee, March 28, 2009
This EF0 tornado ran 1.0 miles across Sequatchie County on March 28, 2009, touching down at 8:53 PM CDT and reaching 30 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $30,000 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 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
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
- EF0
- Date
- March 28, 2009
- Touchdown
- 8:53 PM CDT (01:53 UTC)
- Lifted
- 8:55 PM CDT (01:55 UTC)
- On the ground
- 2 minutes
- Path length
- 1.0 miles (1.6 km)
- Path width
- 30 yards (27 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $30,000
- County
- Sequatchie County
- Touchdown point
- 35.350, -85.360
- Lift-off point
- 35.350, -85.360
- Record number
- 0903281953-01
What the Weather Service recorded
A strong cold front extending south from an Ohio Valley surface low moved through Southeast Tennessee during the evening and produced a line of severe thunderstoms. Moderate instability and southeasterly flow ahead of the line of storms aided the development of an isolated supercell thunderstorm. A brief...weak tornado passed just southeast of Dunlap, Tennessee during the late evening hours.
An EF0 tornado with winds estimated around 80 mph was observed near Lewis Road. Several trees were reported down along with significant damage to a house garage.
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.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:44 UTC and running to 04:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:44 UTC | 04:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | MRX |
| 01:09 UTC | 02:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | MRX |
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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:59 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), 00:00Z
1.9 hours before the tornado, 142 km from the path. March 29, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 471 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -29 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 537 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1203 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 80 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 30 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 315 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 366 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.8
- Supercell composite
- 4.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 7.7 K/km
Nashville Metro, TN (KBNA), 12:00Z
10.1 hours after it, 142 km from the path. March 29, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -93805 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 11 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 903 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 51 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 30 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 259 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 240 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 3.9 K/km
The radar
The Northeast Alabama radar (KHTX), 81 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:53 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01:45 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 3 Sw Dunlap | Sequatchie, TN | SEVERAL TREES DOWN. |
| 01:45 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 6 Ssw Dunlap | Sequatchie, TN | ONE TREE DOWN ON FRANK TATE ROAD. REPORTED BY DISPATCH. |
| 01:50 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Dunlap | Sequatchie, TN | A TREE FELL ONTO A HOUSE IN DUNLAP. NO INJURIES REPORTED. |
| 01:53 UTC | TORNADO | 2 Se Dunlap | Sequatchie, TN | EF0 TORNADO...WITH WINDS ESTIMATED AROUND 80 MPH...WAS OBSERVED NEAR LEWIS ROAD. PATH LENGTH WAS AROUND ONE MILE...WITH A WIDTH OF 30 YARDS. SEVERAL TREES WERE REPORTED DOWN ALONG WITH SIGNIFICANT STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO A |
| 02:00 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 2 E Dunlap | Sequatchie, TN | A GARAGE BLOWN 40 YARDS OFF ITS FOUNDATION AND SEVERAL TREES DOWN. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2009 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of March 28, 2009
13 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 28 | 2:58 AM CDT | EF1 | Smith, MS | 0.8 | 200 | $500,000 | ||
| March 28 | 10:50 AM EDT | EF0 | Dooly, GA | 0.3 | 50 | $100,000 | ||
| March 28 | 4:23 PM CDT | EF1 | Union, KY | 2.1 | 75 | $60,000 | ||
| March 28 | 5:31 PM EDT | EF1 | Clarendon, SC | 4.0 | 330 | |||
| March 28 | 4:40 PM CDT | EF3 | Union, KY | 12.3 | 400 | 2 | $540,000 | |
| March 28 | 5:38 PM CDT | EF1 | Cheatham, TN | 5.0 | 100 | $100,000 | ||
| March 28 | 5:38 PM CDT | EF0 | Daviess, KY | 0.2 | 30 | |||
| March 28 | 7:00 PM CDT | EF1 | Rutherford, TN | 1.0 | 50 | $4.4 million | ||
| March 28 | 7:01 PM CDT | EF1 | Franklin, TN | 1.5 | 60 | $30,000 | ||
| March 28 | 9:08 PM EDT | EF2 | Bladen, NC | 1.6 | 40 | $200,000 | ||
| March 28 | 8:11 PM CDT | EF0 | Jackson, AL | 1.6 | 40 | $15,000 | ||
| March 28 | 8:16 PM CDT | EF1 | DeKalb, AL | 2.5 | 50 | $20,000 | ||
| March 28 | 9:36 PM EDT | EF0 | Bladen, NC | 0.1 | 10 | $1,000 |
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.