EF0 tornado, Caney Fork to Goffton, Tennessee, March 3, 2020

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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 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

EF0

Date

March 3, 2020

Touchdown

2:05 AM CST (08:05 UTC)

Lifted

2:06 AM CST (08:06 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Putnam County

Touchdown point

36.108, -85.446

Lift-off point

36.107, -85.442

Record number

2003030205-01

495 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OHX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF4. The highest wind the damage implies is 175 mph.

• Roof supposedly came from home a block away
• Three bolt screws with concrete at the garage
• House attached to the foundation with these nails
• Very well constructed foundation and home. Back side was greatly destroyed (not shown in pic)

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

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.

A very brief and weak EF-0 tornado touched down just off of Highway 70 and Overstreet Drive southeast of Cookeville in the Goffton area. Damage was mostly to the roof of one house, a metal garage, and an outbuilding. There were also several trees with large branches broken off.

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

17 minutes of warning. NWS OHX issued a tornado warning for this county at 07:48 UTC, 17 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 08:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 07:01 UTC and running to 12:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:56 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.

Sparta (SRB), 10 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Nashville radar (KOHX), 102 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 08:05 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

8 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.