TALLAHASSEE, FL — A tornado with winds approaching 85 miles per hour ripped through Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city, late Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service has confirmed. A strong area of low pressure swept through the Florida Panhandle early on Wednesday, producing damaging storms that spawned damaging winds and at least one tornado in the northern fringes of the state. After touching down at approximately 11:37 AM in southern Leon County, the tornado headed eastward, lashing the Tallahassee International Airport and southern edges of the city. While overall losses were minor for the airport, the City of Tallahassee tweeted a picture of an overturned plane and extensive damage to a hangar.
The tornado tore through 16.7 miles and reached a width of 200 yards. While damage was notable at the airport, it wasn’t the only thing catching meteorolgists’ attention. The local NEXRAD radar, located at the airport, was also shut offline as the tornado made a close approach.
@JakeCarstens tweeted a GIF of velocity scans as the tornado closed in. The graphic shows a well-defined couplet, where outbound wind (red) touches inbound wind (green), suggesting tight vorticity, moving over the radar before going offline for nearly an hour. It was later found that, while the radar tower itself endured the storm without taking any damage, the tornado did disrupt communications, which took the site offline briefly.
A nearby WeatherSTEM station (FSWN State Emergency Operations Center) picked up a noticeable drop in pressure and wind gusts approaching 40 mph as at 11:55 as the tornado-producing storm arrived.
The tornado was appraised as an EF-0, the lowest on the six-step Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale, although 85 miles per hour is the strongest wind speed an EF-0 can have. Fortunately, there were no injuries nor fatalities from the storm.
