EF2 tornado, Liberty to Forest Hill, Tennessee, March 2, 2020

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

March 2, 2020

Touchdown

11:05 PM CST (05:05 UTC)

Lifted

11:31 PM CST (05:31 UTC)

On the ground

26 minutes

Path length

18.7 miles (30.1 km)

Path width

250 yards (229 m)

Deaths

1

Injuries

2

Property damage

$1.1 million

Crop damage

$300,000

Counties

Benton and Humphreys counties

Touchdown point

36.093, -88.119

Lift-off point

36.107, -87.784

Record number

2003022305-01

43 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MEG and NWS OHX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 125 mph.

• trees scattered across neighborhood, uprooted
• Hundreds of trees uprooted
• Hundreds of trees downed and snapped. 250 yards
• Roof blown off barn to the northwest landing in trees

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

A surface low tracked along a warm front stretched just north of the Mid-South. Meanwhile, a potent upper-level disturbance tracked into the region increasing wind fields and triggering thunderstorms along the warm front and south of the front, in the warm sector, during the late evening hours of March 2, 2020. A couple of supercells tracked across the Missouri Bootheel and northwest Tennessee during the late evening hours. One supercell spawned three tornadoes across Gibson, Carroll, and Benton counties. A few severe storms also developed along a trailing cold front across eastern Arkansas and West Tennessee during the early morning hours of March 3, 2020.

From the late evening hours on March 2 into the early morning hours on March 3, supercell thunderstorms developed and spawned tornadoes across southeast Missouri, southern Kentucky, Tennessee, and central Alabama. One of these supercells formed near the Mississippi River in west Tennessee, then tracked eastward across the entire length of the state just north of the Interstate 40 corridor, spawning 10 tornadoes and dropping large hail bigger than the size of baseballs. Seven of these tornadoes touched down across Middle Tennessee, resulting in widespread damage, 307 injuries and 24 fatalities. An additional fatality and 2 more injuries occurred in Benton County in west Tennessee. These tornadoes were the worst seen in Tennessee since the devastating tornadoes of April 27, 2011 across east Tennessee, as well as the Super Tuesday tornadoes of February 5-6, 2008. Total damage estimates from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency across Middle Tennessee reached $1.6 billion.

The tornado started in Benton County northwest of Camden and caused a substantial amount of tree damage along the path the extended into the Tennessee River. Several homes and mobile homes were damaged along the path in Benton County. The most damage, in Benton County, was in the Ballard Road area. Peak winds were estimated around 125 mph. The tornado then moved across the Tennessee River and into Humphreys County.

An EF-2 tornado started in Benton County northwest of Camden and caused a substantial amount of tree damage along a path that extended to the Tennessee River. Several homes and mobile homes were also��damaged, mostly in the Ballard Road area, resulting in 1 death and 2 injuries.��||The tornado continued across the Tennessee River into Humphreys County, causing EF-1 damage and blowing down��hundreds of trees from the river eastward across��Crystal Springs Road. Progressing eastward, several dozen more trees were blown down��along Lucas Ridge Road, Hemby Branch Road, and Clydeton Road, with some roof panels also damaged and removed from a small outbuilding on Clydeton Road. Additional trees were uprooted along Brazzle Road and Stephenson Road before the tornado dissipated��around Highway 13.

The deaths

1 direct deaths are recorded for this tornado, each with what Storm Data knows of it.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS MEG issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:02 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:27 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 01:02 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 Ft Campbell radar (KHPX), 93 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:02 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 2020 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.