EF1 tornado, Bloomfield to Claytonville, Virginia, August 8, 2024

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

August 8, 2024

Touchdown

9:19 PM EDT (01:19 UTC)

Lifted

9:30 PM EDT (01:30 UTC)

On the ground

11 minutes

Path length

4.8 miles (7.7 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$275,000

Counties

Clarke and Loudoun counties

Touchdown point

39.020, -77.831

Lift-off point

39.066, -77.897

Record number

2408081919-01

15 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 93 mph.

• Property owner says trees came down last evening with storms 9:20 pm
• Over a dozen trees with damage on a horse farm
• Over 5 trees uprooted in tree line
• Hundreds of trees with damage. Some branches, some snapped, some uprooted. Goes the whole way up the ridge line

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

The remnants of Tropical Cyclone Debby spawned a few tornadoes in northern Virginia and eastern West Virginia.

National Weather Service Baltimore/Washington Weather Forecast Office staff conducted a ground survey of storm damage in western Loudoun County, VA, into far eastern Clarke County, VA, that occurred on Thursday evening, August 8, 2024. NWS Doppler Radar in Sterling, Virginia showed a rotating severe thunderstorm that developed a tornado.||The tornado touched down north of Willisville where scattered tree damage in the form of downed and sheared off branches were observed. The tornado traveled west-northwest through the fields of horse farms along Foxlease Lane before producing additional tree damage along Newstead Lane. Several dozen trees were uprooted, branches sheared off, or otherwise damaged in this area. No damage to buildings or barns was noted. The tornado then continued moving west-northwest into rural farmland with sporadic tree damage.||By the time the tornado approached Trappe Road, the damage became more concentrated. Considerable tree damage was observed to the farmsteads east and west Trappe Road. Multiple tree lines had trees sheared off at the top. The most widespread damage was to wooded areas along the eastern facing slopes of the Blue Ridge. The hillside had approximately a hundred yard wide stretch of damage moving the entire way up the ridge. In this area, several hundreds of trees were visibly sheared at the top, uprooted, or otherwise damaged. The resulting downed trees were laying in every direction.

As the tornado continued further west towards the top of the Blue Ridge, additional tree damage was observed in the vicinity of Blue Ridge Mountain Road and Morgans Mill Road where approximately two dozen trees were uprooted and others sustained branch damage. The tornado then dissipated as it moved westward into Clarke County, VA.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS LWX issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:07 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 22:37 UTC and running to 10:19 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 00:52 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 Sterling radar (KLWX), 33 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:19 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 2024 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.