EF2 tornado, Forty Eight Creek Br to North Highland, Tennessee, March 25, 2021

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 25, 2021

Touchdown

7:30 PM CDT (00:30 UTC)

Lifted

7:59 PM CDT (00:59 UTC)

On the ground

29 minutes

Path length

22.1 miles (35.6 km)

Path width

350 yards (320 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$350,000

Counties

Wayne, Lewis and Lawrence counties

Touchdown point

35.334, -87.713

Lift-off point

35.476, -87.362

Record number

2103251830-01

45 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OHX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 130 mph.

• Dozens of trees blown down
• Uprooted softwoods. Some roof damage
• 5 ETLines collapsed. Power is out in all of Wayne County.
• Trees laying to N poll damage

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

A potent weather system on March 25, 2021 led to an outbreak of supercells and tornadoes across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, some of which were strong to violent. Across Middle Tennessee, a left-moving or anticyclonic supercell caused dozens of reports of large hail and wind damage from the Nashville metro northward to the Kentucky border during the afternoon. Later in the evening, additional supercell thunderstorms developed and spawned three tornadoes in Wayne, Lewis, Lawrence, and Rutherford Counties, as well as more reports of hail and wind damage.

A strong EF-2 tornado touched down just northeast of the city of Waynesboro between Highway 64 and Highway 99. The tornado increased in intensity rapidly as it tracked through neighborhoods along Highway 99. A few trees and outbuildings were blown down and destroyed at the beginning of the track before the tornado moved across Steele Street, Hassell Drive, High Street, and Natural Bridge Road, taking the roofs off several homes and causing one minor injury. Five high power TVA electrical steel poles were bent to the ground in this area, knocking out power to all of Wayne County. Continuing northeastward, the tornado destroyed a barn on York Road and damaged several homes on Fortyeight Creek Road. The tornado then moved through rural, forested and hilly terrain with few roads for a total of 22.2 miles across northeast Wayne, extreme southern Lewis, and extreme northwestern Lawrence Counties, blowing down hundreds of trees before finally lifting around 4 miles northwest of Summertown.

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

26 minutes of warning. NWS OHX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:04 UTC, 26 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:29 UTC and running to 00:57 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 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 22:26 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.

Lawrenceburg (2M2), 32 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Nashville radar (KOHX), 128 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:32 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 2021 tornado in TennesseeEvery tornado in Tennessee since 1950Warnings in force in Tennessee nowThe forecast where you are

19 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.