Tornado Museum

*** Beginning in 2024 - Tornado museum work will transition to a Tornado History GIS Project (A work in Progress) incorporating all tornadoes during the Period of Record 1950 - Present over the National Weather Service Mobile/Pensacola County Warning Area (CWA). This page will remain in place but only covers those events F1-EF1+ from 1995 to 2023 ***

For Further Details on Past Events Please Refer to:

NCEI's Storm Events Database.

NWS Mobile/Pensacola Past Significant Events Page

Description:

The Tornado Museum graphically presents select pieces of meteorological data to describe and document in greater detail each tornado greater than or equal to EF-1 intensity (or F1 prior to 2007) since June of 1994 that occurred within the NWS Mobile/Pensacola County Warning Area (CWFA). The CWFA spans portions of southeast Mississippi, south central Alabama, the extreme western Florida Panhandle and all of southwest Alabama. The year 1994 was chosen as a starting point because that was the year the WSR-88D radar was installed. Ironically, there were no F1 or greater tornadoes between June and December of 1994. For the first time, the WSR-88D gave local NWS meteorologists the opportunity to not only analyze radar reflectivity, but it also provided velocity information which depicts the air flow inside of developing thunderstorm updrafts. The project is intended as a form of community outreach from your local NWS Mobile/Pensacola to the citizens we PROUDLY serve. Each case presents a general description of the tornado, a graphical path, radar reflectivity and velocity images immediately BEFORE or SIMULTANEOUS WITH the tornado’s beginning (never after), a national storm report summary showing how the event fits in with those around it (courtesy NWS Storm Prediction Center), a sounding, a hodograph, a composite of various upper air features and a surface chart analyzed the hour before the tornado. For each case, all available data may be used to re-create soundings and hodographs based on their availability and “perceived meteorological representativeness” of the air mass in which the tornado formed.

Click on the map icons for event details.

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National Weather Service Mobile AL
Tornado Museum
Last Updated: 12/8/2022

Disclaimer

Disclaimers:

New cases will likely not be posted immediately following an event. It takes time.

Every possible attempt is made to provide all data that are available as described above.

Data are not available for all cases, especially those early in the dataset.

Additional ‘proximity’ soundings and hodographs will be constructed as time permits. Check with us often!

Weak tornadoes below EF-1 and F1 intensity are not documented due to their relative high frequency of occurrence, short path lengths and relatively low impacts.

The radar closest to the event in question will be presented in the Tornado Museum. Radars utilized include: KMOB (Mobile, AL), KDGX (Jackson, MS), KBMX (Birmingham, AL – N Wilcox Co. AL), KMXX (Maxwell AFB, Montgomery, AL), KEOX (Ft. Rucker, AL) and KEVX (Eglin AFB, Red Bay, FL).

The tornado graphs will be updated on an annual basis in January.

Acknowledgements: The National Weather Service (NWS) Mobile/Pensacola Tornado Museum began as a localized research project to examine the vertical wind shear characteristics of cold season (Oct-Mar) tornado-producing meso-cyclones in 2007. The project’s Team Lead was Jeffrey M. Medlin (NWS Mobile/Pensacola Meteorologist in Charge, ret.) who also reconstructed many, but not all soundings and hodographs. Joe Maniscalco (NWS Mobile/Pensacola Observation Program Leader/Meteorologist) now serves as the Project’s Administrator. Ray Ball (NWS Mobile/Pensacola Information Technology Officer) designed and coded the museum’s web interface and installs the cases. the tornado descriptions and path data were provided by NWS Mobile/Pensacola Storm Survey Teams lead by Jason Beaman (NWS Mobile/Pensacola Meteorologist in Charge, formerly Warning Coordination Meteorologist) and Gary Beeler (NWS Mobile/Pensacola Warning Coordination Meteorologist, ret.). Others who contributed to this project include (in ascending chronological order): Trey Alvey (University of South Alabama Alumnus); Marc Sarza (University of South Alabama Volunteer – especially assisted with radar data collection); Chris Rothwell (NWS Key West, FL – especially assisted with case management); Ryan Rogers (NWS Mobile/Pensacola). Updated – May 2022