EF1 tornado, Idlewild to Gann, 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 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 2, 2020

Touchdown

10:12 PM CST (04:12 UTC)

Lifted

10:23 PM CST (04:23 UTC)

On the ground

11 minutes

Path length

7.3 miles (11.7 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$250,000

County

Gibson County

Touchdown point

36.032, -88.828

Lift-off point

36.053, -88.700

Record number

2003022212-01

18 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MEG, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 115 mph.

• roof off barn, trees uprooted.

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.

Damage to homes and mobile homes was observed from just west of Highway 45E to Highway 105 near the Gibson-Carroll County line. Numerous trees were also damaged along this path. The most significant damage was observed along Gann Road between Goosefoot and Belews Chapel Road. Peak winds were estimated at 95 mph.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:23 UTC and running to 06:59 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.

Huntingdon (HZD), 27 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Paducah radar (KPAH), 114 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:09 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.