EF1 tornado, Monterey, Tennessee, March 1, 2017

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

March 1, 2017

Touchdown

8:35 AM CST (14:35 UTC)

Lifted

8:36 AM CST (14:36 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

90 yards (82 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

Putnam County

Touchdown point

36.150, -85.238

Lift-off point

36.151, -85.236

Record number

1703010835-01

21 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OHX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

• Trees in different directions, windows blown out of pickup.
• Part of mobile home slid off cinder blocks
• Google Earth satellite imagery shows several trees uprooted in this area
• Google Earth satellite imagery showed several trees uprooted in this area

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

The most damaging severe weather outbreak in Middle Tennessee since the December 23, 2015 Tornado Outbreak struck during the morning hours on March 1, 2017. A line of strong to severe thunderstorms with embedded circulations, known as a Quasi-Linear Convective System (or QLCS), moved rapidly across Middle Tennessee at 60-70 mph from west to east between 6 AM and 10 AM CST. Additional severe thunderstorms developed later in the morning and affected areas of southern Middle Tennessee from the late morning into the early afternoon hours. Widespread damaging winds were reported in nearly every county along and north of I-40 across Middle Tennessee, with winds estimated up to 90 mph in some areas. These intense downburst winds caused 3 injuries - two in Clarksville when a tree fell on a mobile home, and one in Lavergne when a tractor trailer flipped over. In addition to the damaging winds, 7 confirmed tornadoes also touched down from the Nashville metro area eastward to the Upper Cumberland, damaging hundreds of homes and businesses. Several reports of large hail were also received in parts of southern Middle Tennessee.

A brief EF-1 tornado touched down on Lake Hill Road just east of Monterey in Putnam County. The tornado uprooted and snapped large trees in a very localized area. It also caused minor structural damage to a house and destroyed a few outbuildings.

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

23 minutes of warning. NWS OHX issued a tornado warning for this county at 14:12 UTC, 23 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 14:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 10:57 UTC and running to 16:00 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 12:51 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), 119 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 14:36 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 2017 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

38 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.