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NWS Team Finds EF1 Tornado Slammed McDavid With 105 MPH Winds

A National Weather Service damage assessment team determined Thursday afternoon that an EF1 tornado was responsible for a path of destruction through McDavid.

The weather service believes the tornado had winds of about 105 mph at its peak along a half mile long, 80-yard wide path. The tornado first touched down about 9:28 a.m. Wednesday near Highway 164 just west of Highway 29, skipped across Highway 29 before continuing down Main Street to Railroad Street.

NorthEscambia.com was along with the National Weather Service team Thursday afternoon as they made their decision that a tornado caused the damage, rather than strong thunderstorm winds.

While to some, it might not seem that it would matter if the damage was from straight line winds or a tornado, but the difference is important to forecasters.

“We learn from the storms,” Jeff Garmon, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service Mobile said. “What we learn makes us better forecasts, and better and getting warnings out to the public.”

At the time the storm hit McDavid Wednesday morning, McDavid was under a tornado warning.

That warning helped James Milstead know the urgency of the situation — moments before the roof came off his wood frame home on Main Street. The home was also lifted off its support piers and shifted about three feet away.

“I was in the front room there watching the storms on the TV,” Milstead said Thursday afternoon outside his destroyed home. “I knew the rain was not here yet; I expected there would have been rain. The power blinked off, and I punched the button on my weather radio. They said there was a tornado warning.”

That advance warning gave Milstead the time he needed to take shelter in a hallway, moments before the spiraling 105-mph tornado winds slammed his 60-year old family home.

As the group of meteorologists began surveying the damage along Highway 164, they first thought they were looking at damage from powerful straight line winds. At Joe Flower’s brick home, forecasters estimated that winds of about 90 mph had downed large limbs around the brick home.

At each stop along the way, Garman enters storm damage and GPS coordinates into his Blackberry to track the path of the tornado.

But as the group moved over to Main Street, they began to notice the tell-tale signs of a tornado.

Chimneys that fell in opposite directions. Debris scattered in different directions. A metal basketball goal post bent over to the north when the storm was moving east.  Milstead’s home lifted and moved.

And, across the street, almost no damage whatsoever.

“If we are looking at straight line winds, wouldn’t that have had something?” meteorologist Jeffrey Cupo asked his colleagues about the undamaged properties across the street.

Exactly, those trees would have had damage,” Garman said.

“Now, I’m thinking weak tornado,” Cupo replied.

“EF1, I’m thinking upper bound EF1,” Garman said.

“Easily,” Cupo replied.

“It’s obvious we had something more here,” Garman said. “It’s official, we had an EF1.”

Pictured: TLate Thursday afternoon, a team from the National Weather Service Office in Mobile surveys the damage from an EF1 tornado in McDavid. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.