EF1 tornado, Cuzzie to Woodville, West Virginia, March 2, 2012

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

March 2, 2012

Touchdown

7:32 PM EST (00:32 UTC)

Lifted

7:50 PM EST (00:50 UTC)

On the ground

18 minutes

Path length

16.0 miles (25.8 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Lincoln County

Touchdown point

38.147, -82.157

Lift-off point

38.184, -81.866

Record number

1203021832-01

A deepening low pressure system was lifting northeast out of central Illinois around midday on Friday, the 2nd. It reached southern Michigan by evening. By late afternoon its associated warm front had pulled north into central Ohio and into central West Virginia near Charleston. Some small hail fell with the warm front across southern West Virginia during the late morning hours. The warm front struggled to move much further to the northeast. This left eastern Kentucky in the warm sector. During the late afternoon, surface dew points increased into the upper 50s in eastern Kentucky and into the lower 60s across southern Kentucky. This was ahead of the approaching cold front. ||Severe thunderstorms, including distinct supercells, moved into eastern Kentucky just before sunset. One of those supercells produced a long lived tornado that moved into Wayne County from Lawrence County, Kentucky. The tornado crossed the Tug Fork River near Glen Hayes and moved through the Dunlow, Kiahsville, Cove Gap vicinity. It weakened and disispated in Lincoln County. It was the same storm that had hit West Liberty, Kentucky earlier. A shorter track tornado formed a short time later from a separate cell, affecting portions of Lincoln County. ||Another tornado with a long track, crossed the Tug Fork River near Kermit before weakening and lifting in Mingo County. This is the first recorded tornado for Mingo County. This was same supercell thunderstorm that had hit the Salyersville, Kentucky vicinity earlier.||Flooding was also a significant problem. The warm frontal rain kept the ground saturated. The early evening thunderstorms then dumped around 1.5 inches in 3 hours, causing flash flooding on streams, mainly in Wayne and Lincoln Counties. ||In Lincoln County, the total damage from the 2 tornado paths plus the flash flooding was 1 house destroyed, 5 homes with major damage, and 8 others with minor damage. ||Around 2,300 customers lost electricity in Wayne County, with another 2000 in Lincoln County. ||In the aftermath, a few residents around Charleston, including the Kanawha County community of Tornado, found paper envelopes, cancelled checks, and pictures around their property, that had fallen from the sky. The items were from the West Liberty, Kentucky vicinity. ||This event was included with the 29th of February episode as a federal disaster. Around 130 West Virginia National Guard troops were used in the field during the course of this federal disaster. See FEMA disaster number 4059 for additional details.

The long tracked tornado was weakening as it finally dissipated in Lincoln County. Wind gusts were estimated in the 85 to 90 mph range in tree damage around Ranger. On the enhanced Fujita scale it would be on the low end of the 1 rating.

A separate supercell that was further north and slightly later in time produced a second tornado in Lincoln County. Damage to trees and a few residents were noted around Palermo and also along Sulphur Spring Road near Alkol. Similar to the other tornado in Lincoln County, maximum winds were estimated on the low end of the EF1 scale, in the 85 to 90 mph range.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS RLX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:31 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:20 UTC and running to 01:58 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 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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 Charleston,WV radar (KRLX), 30 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:31 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 2012 tornado in West VirginiaEvery tornado in West Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in West Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

69 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 70 of them

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.