EF1 tornado, Hohenwald to Napier, Tennessee, May 1, 2009

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 1, 2009

Touchdown

2:20 PM CDT (19:20 UTC)

Lifted

2:32 PM CDT (19:32 UTC)

On the ground

12 minutes

Path length

5.3 miles (8.5 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

2

Property damage

$200,000

Counties

Lewis and Lawrence counties

Touchdown point

35.425, -87.502

Lift-off point

35.417, -87.409

Record number

0905011320-01

A large area of showers and thunderstorms covered most of Middle Tennessee during the early afternoon through the mid evening hours as a strong cold front moved from the Ohio Valley into Middle Tennessee, resulting in two EF1 Tornadoes, heavy rainfall, flash flooding, large hail, trees downed, and some structural damage.

This EF1 Tornado, with maximum estimated wind speed at 100 mph, started 8 miles south-southeast of Hohenwald in Lewis County, or just west of Napier, and moved east into far northwest Lawrence County. It snapped or uprooted many hundreds of large hardwood trees. It also flipped a tractor trailer. The hardest hit area was a large campground in Napier. In addition to the trees, several large camper trailers were damaged or flipped by the tornado. Two people sustained minor injuries and had to be rescued from inside the camper.||Newspaper also reported that three homes received damage but details of damage not given.

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

0 minutes of warning. NWS OHX issued a tornado warning for this county at 19:20 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 19:45 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 17:01 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), 122 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:18 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 2009 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

6 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.