EF2 tornado, Hugh, Virginia, May 8, 2009

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

May 8, 2009

Touchdown

9:45 PM EDT (01:45 UTC)

Lifted

9:48 PM EDT (01:48 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.8 km)

Path width

120 yards (110 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Wise County

Touchdown point

37.067, -82.549

Lift-off point

37.076, -82.521

Record number

0905081945-01

A highly organized mesoscale convective vorticity maximum with strong low to mid tropospheric flow coupled with moderate instability resulted in the development of discrete supercellular thunderstorms. These storms produced a long-lived tornado across Northeast Tennessee late in the afternoon and another long duration tornado across Southwest Virginia later in the evening.

An EF2 tornado with maximum wind speeds of 120 miles an hour occurred around five miles southeast of Pound, Virginia. Tornado damage was observed along the path which measured 1.7 mile in length with a path width of 120 yards. Two trailers along with several outbuildings were destroyed while one trailer was damaged. Numerous trees...some in clusters...were downed by the high wind speeds generated by the tornado.

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

23 minutes of warning. NWS MRX issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:22 UTC, 23 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:42 UTC and running to 04:00 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:53 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.

Wise/Lonesome Pine (LNP), 9 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Jackson,KY radar (KJKL), 90 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:45 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 2009 tornado in VirginiaEvery tornado in Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

45 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.