EF1 tornado, Elma, Virginia, April 19, 2019

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

April 19, 2019

Touchdown

5:31 PM EDT (21:31 UTC)

Lifted

5:33 PM EDT (21:33 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.5 miles (2.4 km)

Path width

125 yards (114 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Nelson County

Touchdown point

37.699, -78.789

Lift-off point

37.720, -78.781

Record number

1904191531-01

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• Several trees snapped and uprooted in the forest.
• Dozens of trees snapped and uprooted in the forest.
• Large tree over James River Road.
• Dozens of trees downed, killing horse & damaging vehicles. Sheds Damaged. RV pushed over.

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

A closed upper level low moved eastward from Missouri and Arkansas and into Tennessee during the daytime hours of April 19th, and then moved northward into Kentucky during the night. At the surface, low pressure moved from near Tennessee in the morning to eastern Kentucky by the evening, and into Ohio by late in the night, intensifying along its track. This brought strong forcing across the Mid-Atlantic and southeastern United States with divergent flow aloft and deep moist southerly flow at the surface. Moderate instability developed by the afternoon hours with strong speed and directional shear aloft. This led to two distinct rounds of showers and thunderstorms across northern and central Virginia, with the first round in the mid to late afternoon hours, and a second more organized round in the evening that evolved into a quasi-linear convective system. Some of the thunderstorms became severe with locally damaging winds. Two tornadoes were also confirmed, one from a supercell in the late afternoon, and one from the quasi-linear convective system in the late evening.

A tornado touched down just south of Keys Church Road (Virginia State Route 722) and proceeded north-northeast across Keys Church Road to James River Road. Along this initial phase of the tornado, scattered tree damage was observed in the woods. Multiple trees along this path were snapped about a third of the way up the trunk. A tree was downed towards the southeast over James River Road.||As the tornado continued northeast of James River Road, it intensified and created its most significant damage to two farm properties and adjacent woods. As the width of the circulation expanded to 125 yards, most of the trees within this portion of its path were snapped or uprooted. It is estimated that between 100 and 200 trees were downed in this area. One tree fell and killed a horse. A large tree also fell on three vehicles and a recreational vehicle was blown over. Several small outbuildings and sheds were damaged or destroyed. A resident to the southeast of the tornado captured the funnel in photographs.||The tornado then continued several hundred yards northeast into the forest before dissipating, creating additional widespread tree damage.

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 tornado watch, issued at 16:48 UTC and running to 23:04 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:54 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 Roanoke radar (KFCX), 152 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:30 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 2019 tornado in VirginiaEvery tornado in Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

44 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.