EF3 tornado, Kiser to Brick Mill, Tennessee, March 23, 2011

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

March 23, 2011

Touchdown

9:50 PM EDT (01:50 UTC)

Lifted

9:55 PM EDT (01:55 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

5.8 miles (9.3 km)

Path width

500 yards (457 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

2

Property damage

$2.5 million

County

Blount County

Touchdown point

35.660, -84.232

Lift-off point

35.682, -84.133

Record number

1103231950-01

Severe convection developed ahead of a cold front during the late afternoon through the late evening hours in an atmosphere characterized by high shear with a 40 to 50 knot low level jet and a 120 knot upper level jet but only weak to moderate instability. The result was the tornado which produced EF-3 damage at Greenback and in the southern portion of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Eastern Tennessee.

An EF-3 tornado produced 140 mph winds along a 5.8 mile path with a maximum damage path width of 500 yards. Twenty six homes sustained damage ranging from fifty percent to entirely demolished as a result of the tornado.

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

9 minutes of warning. NWS MRX issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:41 UTC, 9 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:24 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 01:42 UTC and running to 02:32 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:57 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 Knoxville radar (KMRX), 89 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:51 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 2011 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.