EF1 tornado, Taylortown to Wilder Chapel, Tennessee, February 20, 2014

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

February 20, 2014

Touchdown

10:23 PM CST (04:23 UTC)

Lifted

10:25 PM CST (04:25 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

2.0 miles (3.2 km)

Path width

400 yards (366 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Franklin County

Touchdown point

35.287, -85.992

Lift-off point

35.303, -85.963

Record number

1402202223-01

42 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS HUN and NWS OHX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• Parts of the sheet metal roofing on a barn on the east side of Highway 41 were blown off
• An old poorly constructed farm outbuilding was destroyed
• Sheet metal back porch patio cover of home at 2135 Rutledge Hill Road was blown northward across the road into trees
• Three grain silos were blown southeastward and destroyed along Highway 41

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A quasi-linear convective system rolled across the region during the evening and overnight hours of the 20th into the 21st producing eight tornadoes in north Alabama and southern middle Tennessee and numerous reports of wind damage.

An EF-1 tornado with wind speeds up to 95 mph tornado touched down in the Tim's Ford State Park area just west of Wiley Road. Several trees were snapped or uprooted in this area. In addition, a large outbuilding was destroyed and a home sustained roof damage. The tornado tracked generally east, pretty much paralleling Cole Lane. Numerous trees were uprooted and another farm building was damaged.||Along Owl Hollow Lane, a home sustained significant damaged when a farm building was completely destroyed and a portion of the roof was blown through the side of the house. About 1/3 of the south facing wall of the home was destroyed and a large chunk of the farm building ended up inside one of the second story bedrooms. Fortunately, the occupants stated they received the warning of the storm coming and took shelter minutes before the storm arrived. The tornado then continued its eastward trek before lifting somewhere west of Haddon Lane.

An EF-1 tornado with wind speeds up to 100 mph tornado touched down in the Estill Springs and Wilder Chapel communities of far northeast Franklin County late on the evening of February 20th. The tornado first snapped trees along and west of Oak Grove Road, north of the intersection with Dabbs Road. The tornado lifted northeast and crossed Wilder Chapel Road. Here, a large swath of hardwood trees were snapped and twisted near the base. A large outbuilding was also destroyed and a home had minor roof damage. Further down Oak Grove Road, additional hardwood trees were uprooted. The tornado weakened as it lifted northeast toward the county line with only minor damage noted along Baker Cemetery Road.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS HUN issued a tornado warning for this county at 04:11 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:28 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:51 UTC and running to 05:41 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:00 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 Northeast Alabama radar (KHTX), 42 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:24 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 2014 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

33 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.