EF1 tornado, Ben Hur to Stickleyville, Virginia, May 16, 2023

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 16, 2023

Touchdown

5:17 PM EDT (21:17 UTC)

Lifted

5:18 PM EDT (21:18 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lee County

Touchdown point

36.740, -83.090

Lift-off point

36.741, -83.088

Record number

2305161517-01

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

• Healthy maple tree with large limbs broken off.
• Healthy maple tree with large limbs snapped. Broken and laying toward the northeast.
• Truck along riverbank uprooted, of note could be poor rooting due to location just inside the creek bed. Also, Root system appears at least partially rotted.
• Large limb broken on small Maple tree, but health and type of tree is unsure.

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

A weak trough brought severe straight line winds and weak tornadoes embedded in a line of severe thunderstorms.

A small tornado path was surveyed in eastern Lee County,|Virginia, approximately 3 miles west-southwest of Pennington Gap|along Poor Valley Ridge near Left Poor Valley Road. Hardwood trees were snapped in a short path following the ridgeline parallel to Left Poor Valley Road.

A NWS survey team found that a tornado touched down on the northwest side of a ridge line south of US Highway 23 near Highway 58 and ended before crossing US 23. The tornado crossed a ridge while uprooting trees before lifting near Old Ridge Road.

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

0 minutes of warning. NWS MRX issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:17 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:43 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 16:31 UTC and running to 23:07 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:37 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 Knoxville radar (KMRX), 70 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:18 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 2023 tornado in VirginiaEvery tornado in Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

3 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.