EF0 tornado, Unionville to Everona, Virginia, April 6, 2017

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

April 6, 2017

Touchdown

12:29 PM EDT (16:29 UTC)

Lifted

12:33 PM EDT (16:33 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.6 miles (4.2 km)

Path width

175 yards (160 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Orange County

Touchdown point

38.280, -77.970

Lift-off point

38.310, -77.940

Record number

1704061029-01

Cutoff low pressure was over the Ohio Valley. Another area of low pressure strengthened overhead on the occluded boundary. Warm and moist air from the south lead to an unstable atmosphere. Strong shear profiles were in place due to the cutoff low to the west. Strong lift associated with the developing low combined with strong shear and enough instability to produce severe thunderstorms and isolated tornadoes.

The National Weather Service in Baltimore MD/Washington DC has |confirmed a tornado near Unionville in Orange County Virginia |on April 6, 2017.||The tornado caused extensive convergent tree damage intermittently |along its path, along with some minor structural damage. The first |instances of uprooted and snapped trees occurred near the |intersection of Everona Road and Deertrail Lane. The tornado |continued north-northeast, causing additional tree damage on |Signal Hill Lane. ||The most extensive impacts occurred along US Route 522 near Ida Mae |Lane, where many of the trees in the concentrated path of the |tornado were either snapped or uprooted in differing directions. At |least two trees fell on structures. Metal roofing and siding were |removed from a business on the sides of the building opposing storm |motion. Some of this material was lofted and landed in a yard 0.4|miles away. The wall of an outbuilding was displaced several |inches off its foundation. Several homes received minor damage to |shingles, gutters, and siding. Two residents in this area witnessed |the tornado and observed debris being lofted and swirling in the |air. The survey concluded that this concentrated tornadic damage was |embedded within a larger area of very strong straight-line winds, as |numerous trees were downed in unidirectional fashion along a 0.7 mile |stretch of US 522.||The next observable damage occurred on Pine Stake Road near Clover |Hill Farm Lane. Trees were downed in a convergent pattern along a |narrow path, and a wooden fence sustained damage. The tornado lifted |after this point, as no further damage was observed to the north-|northeast.||The National Weather Service would like to thank the Orange County |Emergency Management Agency and the residents interviewed for their |assistance in this survey.

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.

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 12:43 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.

Orange/Orange Co (OMH), 10 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Sterling radar (KLWX), 86 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 16:31 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 2017 tornado in VirginiaEvery tornado in Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

11 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.