EF1 tornado, Middlebury, Vermont, March 26, 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 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 26, 2021

Touchdown

1:40 PM EDT (17:40 UTC)

Lifted

1:41 PM EDT (17:41 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.0 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

2

Property damage

$75,000

County

Addison County

Touchdown point

44.027, -73.145

Lift-off point

44.034, -73.137

Record number

2103261140-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS BTV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 75 mph.

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

Low pressure moved northeast across northern NY during the afternoon of March 26th. This was the same system responsible for the tornado outbreak across AL/MS/GA the previous day. Strong upper atmospheric winds (energy) combined with unseasonably mild and humid air accounted for a line of thunderstorms to develop just east of Lake Ontario and move ENE across the Adirondacks into the southern Champlain Valley of NY/VT and then into central VT.||One particular thunderstorm in this line caused scattered wind damage from northern Lewis and northern Hamilton counties into Essex county before moving across Addison county where an EF1 tornado occurred just north of Middlebury and this same storm caused scattered wind damage in Montpelier, East Montpelier, Plainfield and northern Barre. ||Much of the damage was trees/limbs down along with utility lines but some structural damage to a flimsy, temporary tin roof in Plainfield due to thunderstorm winds and some significant damage to a home and barn structures due to an EF1 tornado in northern Middlebury.

A tornado touched down just northeast of Juniper Lane causing limb|damage before throwing a barrel into a house and shattering a window.|As the tornado tracked northeastward, multiple softwood trees were|either uprooted or had snapped trunks. Once the tornado crossed|Painter Road, it forcibly removed an attached garage from a house,|caused a full collapse of the garage and did significant damage to the|shingled roof. A car was also flipped on its side at the residence.|As the tornado continued to move northeastward, it removed roofing from|multiple farm buildings and uprooted additional softwood trees. Once the|tornado moved northeast of the farm, it entered a field where it snapped|over a dozen additional trees at mid-trunk level before dissipating over|the field. This tornado injured two people during the brief touchdown.

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 severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 15:11 UTC and running to 19:50 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:26 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.

The Burlington radar (KCXX), 53 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:40 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 VermontEvery tornado in Vermont since 1950Warnings in force in Vermont nowThe forecast where you are

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.