EF1 tornado, Coffman to Irontown, West Virginia, July 8, 2014

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

July 8, 2014

Touchdown

3:55 PM EDT (19:55 UTC)

Lifted

4:00 PM EDT (20:00 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

4.4 miles (7.1 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Taylor County

Touchdown point

39.373, -80.040

Lift-off point

39.395, -79.963

Record number

1407081355-01

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

• Damage laying to the north, pines snapped and uprooted.
• Storms hit just before 4PM.
• Trees are laying SW to WSW.
• Trees laying NE, one fell on corner of house.

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

Fast moving thunderstorms formed during the midday in Ohio, well in advance of a cold front in the Midwest and Lower Great Lakes. These storms raced east into central and northern West Virginia at 40 to 45 mph during the afternoon. Their energy was derived mostly by those winds aloft. Brief severe wind gusts reached the ground.

An EF1 tornado with maximum wind gusts estimated around 100 mph touched down near Route 310 north of Grafton and just east of the Tygart River. The storm continued through the Wickwire Valley, then northeast through mostly uninhabitable terrain. The track ended in the Twin Oaks subdivision, just west of Route 119. ||There were no fatalities or injuries. The damage was mostly snapped and uprooted healthy trees. One manufactured home was destroyed after a large tree fell through its roof. A carport was also destroyed.

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 severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:05 UTC and running to 21:05 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:29 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 Pittsburgh radar (KPBZ), 129 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:55 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 2014 tornado in West VirginiaEvery tornado in West Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in West Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

13 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.