Deadly tornado carved 22-mile path of destruction in NC. Most are much, much shorter
A tornado near the coast of North Carolina this week was on the ground for half an hour and carved a 22-mile path of ruin — staggering figures that highlight the twister’s wrath as it razed homes and left three people dead.
A new report released by the National Weather Service shows a unique combination of factors may have contributed to the destruction that accompanied the storm, which arrived with little warning in Brunswick County on Monday night and quickly escalated into an EF-3 tornado.
Tornadoes travel an average distance of roughly 3.5 miles, according to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, which forecasts severe thunderstorms and tornadoes and issues tornado watches. Monday’s twister went more than six times that distance.
Meanwhile, most tornadoes last less than 10 minutes, experts say.
“It was incredibly long,” Steven Pfaff, a warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Wilmington, told McClatchy News. “And we’re confident it was on the ground for most of that track.”
The twister appeared to be on the ground from 11:34 p.m. to 12:02 a.m., according to the report released late Wednesday. It touched down at a golf resort in Sunset Beach as an EF-0 and picked up speed as it crossed a swampy area before overturning a few RVs near the highway, where forecasters said it “rapidly intensified to an EF-2.”
By the time it entered the Ocean Ridge Plantation development and swept at least one home completely off its foundation, the Weather Service estimates the tornado’s wind speeds were topping 160 mph, pushing it to an EF-3. The storm eventually petered out near the community of Delco after razing a double-wide mobile home close to N.C. 17 as an EF-1.
Pfaff said it was only an EF-3 for about half a mile in the Ocean Ridge Plantation community and spent a scattered four miles as an EF-2. But he also said they don’t know the strength of the tornado when it crossed swamps and timber lands in more rural parts of the county.
All told, the tornado was about 825 feet wide. Twisters are typically 660 feet wide, National Geographic has reported.
“Imagine this thing moving at 60 mph, consuming almost three football fields as it was moving down its track,” Pfaff said. “The typical tornado I survey is less than 60 yards (180 feet) across.”
Forecasters said Monday’s storm was the deadliest tornado to strike southeastern North Carolina since November 2006, when the Riegelwood tornado killed eight people in neighboring Columbus County.
That storm was about 1,000 feet wide but left just a mile of severe destruction, the Wilmington Star-News reported at the time. It was North Carolina’s second-deadliest tornado in 50 years.
The Riegelwood tornado was also an EF-3. Reid Hawkins, a science officer with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, told the Star-News in 2016 those twisters are “extremely rare for this coastal area” because “colder air from the ocean typically wards off tornado activity.”
Pfaff said Monday’s storm is the only EF-3 tornado on record to have hit Brunswick County.
Peak tornado season in the Carolinas runs from April to early June and again from September to early October, he told McClatchy News. About 75% of them register as EF-0 or EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, while just 6% are classified as EF-3 or higher.
The time of the year combined with the “extremely impressive” 22 miles of continuous path made Monday’s tornado particularly anomalous, Pfaff said.
Other strong tornadoes
One of the strongest tornadoes to hit Mecklenburg County was an EF-2 in 2012, The Charlotte Observer previously reported. It was about 600 feet wide and ran 1.5 miles.
Last year, severe thunderstorms in Pender County spawned four different tornadoes in a single afternoon — none stronger than an EF-1 with tracks spanning just a few miles, according to the Weather Service. Hurricane Isaias also produced several tornadoes in communities near the coast of North Carolina, including one in Bertie County that killed two people and injured 14 last August.
That storm was also an EF-3, according to the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia. It arrived at a trailer park in the middle of the night and lasted about 11 minutes. Forecasters said the tornado was 1,800 feet wide and followed a path of 10 miles.
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 4:38 PM.
