EF1 tornado, Riders Store, West Virginia, June 4, 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

June 4, 2014

Touchdown

9:30 PM EDT (01:30 UTC)

Lifted

9:32 PM EDT (01:32 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

400 yards (366 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Cabell County

Touchdown point

38.478, -82.224

Lift-off point

38.478, -82.215

Record number

1406041930-01

After some morning rain showers, scattered thunderstorms formed in eastern and southern Ohio during the mid afternoon hours on the 3rd, ahead of a cold front. The storms moved southeast into West Virginia during the evening hours.||The front sagged south to near the Interstate 64 corridor, near Huntington and Charleston, by dawn on the 4th. A strong low pressure for early June moved east through the Midwest, along the frontal boundary, during the day on the 4th. Dew points were in the upper 60s and lower 70s near and south of the front. The disturbance passed to the east by early on the 5th. Several rounds of showers and thunderstorms passed through West Virginia during the afternoon and evening hours on the 4th. The last of the showers and thunderstorms exited McDowell County during the predawn hours.

An EF1 tornado started on a hilltop near the intersection of Howell's Mill Road and Rush Hollow Road. The tornado descended a valley containing the headwaters of Big Cabell Creek. The path ended on the opposite hilltop, resulting in a length around a half mile. ||The maximum wind speed was estimated around 100 mph. The maximum width was around 400 yards.||One house sustained substantial damage, when a large tree fell on it. There was extensive tree damage, both snapped and uprooted. Some of the trees were 30 inches in diameter.

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 19:14 UTC and running to 03:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:56 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), 47 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:31 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 2014 tornado in West VirginiaEvery tornado in West Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in West Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

9 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.