EF0 tornado, Charles Town, West Virginia, July 5, 2017

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   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

EF0

Date

July 5, 2017

Touchdown

10:14 PM EDT (02:14 UTC)

Lifted

10:15 PM EDT (02:15 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Jefferson County

Touchdown point

39.297, -77.844

Lift-off point

39.300, -77.847

Record number

1707052014-01

A boundary passed through the area during the evening hours. Winds aloft changed direction with height and also increased near the boundary. A storm developed along the boundary and the rotation from the changing winds aloft caused an isolated tornado to develop.

The National Weather Service in Baltimore MD/Washington DC has|confirmed a weak tornado near Charles Town in Jefferson County WV on|July 05 2017.||A small tornado touched down at the entrance to the Jefferson|Crossing Shopping Center on Flowing Springs Road just north of |U.S. 340. The tornado damaged the sign at the entrance.||The tornado crossed Flowing Springs Road and damaged the roofing |of three barns and the door to a fourth barn located at Hollywood|Casino at Charles Town Races. One barn lost a section of roof|completely, leaving seven stalls exposed. Debris from the roof of|one barn was thrown into power lines, snapping a telephone pole.|Fencing was also damaged by debris from the roof. Projectile |impacts were also noted in nearby barn roofs from two- by-four |pieces of wood that were lofted by the tornado.||The tornado lifted as it crossed East Fifth Avenue near the|vehicle entrance to the barn area.||The tornado was captured on security camera footage at the|Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races. The footage showed|sections of barn roof being lifted and spun into the air.||Velocity data from the FAA Terminal Doppler Radar located near|Leesburg, VA that serves Washington Dulles International Airport |corroborated these impacts with a brief, weak shear signature |from 2014 to 2015 UTC.

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.

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. The outlook in force was issued at 00:57 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), 47 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:15 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 2017 tornado in West VirginiaEvery tornado in West Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in West Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.