EF1 tornado, Blanks to Dunns Corner, Virginia, May 5, 2017

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

May 5, 2017

Touchdown

5:40 AM EDT (09:40 UTC)

Lifted

5:50 AM EDT (09:50 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

14.8 miles (23.8 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$200,000

County

Mecklenburg County

Touchdown point

36.577, -78.441

Lift-off point

36.742, -78.270

Record number

1705050340-01

11 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS AKQ, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Note that the camper was not moved or damaged.
• Heavily wooded area. Other isolated damage noted.

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

Scattered severe thunderstorms in advance of low pressure and its associated cold front produced damaging winds and six tornadoes across portions of central and eastern Virginia.

Tornado briefly touched down along and just south of the John Kerr Reservoir in southern Mecklenburg county. The tornado caused minor tree damage along Phyllis Road south of Boydton, uprooting a few trees and snapping off several others. The tornado lifted and continued north northeast crossing Route 58, before touching |down again in Baskerville along Baskerville Road, and uprooting and breaking numerous trees. A barn on Baskerville Road was destroyed with at least two walls failing. Some additional minor structural damage to flashing was noted to another outbuilding just north of VA-47.

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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 05:30 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 Raleigh/Durham radar (KRAX), 111 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 09:37 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

12 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.