The nine tornadoes in the RAH CWA were produced by four supercell thunderstorms, with each supercell producing at least two tornadoes. The Sanford-Raleigh tornado and the Fayetteville-Smithfield tornado were long tracked and were on the ground for more than 55 miles each.
The 9 tornadoes in central North Carolina were on the ground for a total of Seven fatalities occurred in mobile homes and the other in a vehicle. All of the tornado fatalities occurred within the boundaries of tornado watches and were preceded by tornado warnings. The mean lead time for tornado warnings covering fatalities was 28 minutes and the mean lead time for all tornado warnings issued was 26 minutes. One tornado came within 1. As the storm drew closer, the power went out but there was no damage to the building or in the immediate area.
The staff noted a strong odor of pine in the air after returning to the operations area. On the morning of 13 April, forecasters became even more concerned as noted in the AFD with confidence increasing on 14 April.
By the afternoon of 15 April, forecasters expressed a growing confidence of a significant tornado outbreak in the AFD. On Saturday morning, forecasters at WFO Raleigh and the Storm Prediction Center SPC issued statements and alerts that emphasized the unique and serious dangers presented by this particular weather pattern. Synoptic and Mesoscale Summary- The upper air pattern on the morning of 16 April featured an impressive eastward advancing upper level trough extending from the western Great Lakes into the lower Mississippi Valley.
A 90 kt mid-level jet was rounding the base of the hPa trough at 12 UTC across northeast Alabama, northwest Georgia, and far southeast Tennessee with a diffluent pattern noted across Georgia and the Carolinas.
At hPa, a strong jet core of kts was located across northern Mississippi, northern Alabama, and southeastern Tennessee. At hPa, a closed low was analyzed over the western Great Lakes with a trough axis extending south along and near the Mississippi River. Another trough axis was located near and just west of the Southern Appalachians in eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and northwestern Georgia.
Ahead of this trough, a region of enhanced south-southwesterly to southerly winds of 50 kts or more was analyzed across the western Carolinas, West Virginia, and western Virginia. A thermal ridge at hPa extended into the Carolinas with dew points ranging into the 9 to 11 degree C range. A strong southeasterly flow at hPa was noted with winds of 35 to 45 kts across central North Carolina.
At the surface, a cold front was analyzed near or just west of the Appalachians, extending from eastern Kentucky south across far western North Carolina into Georgia and the Florida panhandle. A warm front noting the leading edge of a warmer, more moist and unstable surface air mass extended west to east across southern North Carolina to the northeastern North Carolina Coast.
North of the warm front, surface dew points were generally in the mid to upper 50s with temperatures in the upper 50s to lower 60s. South of the front, dew points climbed into the lower to mid 60s. The setup of synoptic scale features with this event was somewhat similar to the composite map of major synoptic scale features typically associated with severe weather outbreaks provided by Barnes and Newton The regional composite radar at UTC showed some scattered light to moderate rain showers across the Piedmont and Foothills of North Carolina with some convection developing south of the warm front across South Carolina and Georgia.
The strong low level flow resulted in strong, deep layer shear with bulk shear values around 50 to 60 kts. The 60 degree isodrosotherm extended into the northern Piedmont, very close to the North Carolina-Virginia border with dew points approaching the mid 60s in far southern North Carolina.
The squall line moved quickly east, advancing off of, and out ahead of the slow moving cold front. There was very little convection ahead of the squall line and the limited amount of convection that developed ahead of the squall line was weak and dissipated fairly quickly.
One thought is that the strong vertical wind shear had a detrimental effect on the convection that tried to develop ahead of the squall line. The developing updrafts essentially tilted and ripped the immature convection apart. Further west, the large scale forcing at the mid and upper levels and the surface cold front were sufficient to initiate and sustain the convection in the highly sheared environment.
The warm front reached the Virginia border and dew points were well into the lower to middle 60s across central North Carolina. During the previous 6 hours, the surface based CAPE had increased dramatically during the late morning and afternoon hours. It is worth noting that the increase in the surface instability was dramatic and only preceded the squall line by just a few hours.
The surface flow increased and backed more , resulting in incredible hodographs. The convection had intensified into a well-developed line of thunderstorms, and was able to race ahead of the cold front and survive in the strongly sheared environment as it reached the western Piedmont. The outflow behind the squall line was not especially cold, and there was also very little trailing stratiform precipitation behind the squall line, both suggesting that the environment was not supportive of long lived linear convection.
During the next few hours, the well-developed pre-frontal squall line fractured into multiple, discrete, long lived tornadic supercells. The large vertical wind shear, strongly curved clockwise hodographs, and minimal low-level line-normal shear appeared to strongly favor the development and maintenance of discrete supercells. Severe Weather Reports Map of tornado tracks and strength across North Carolina on 16 April - The map below highlights the tornado tracks across the entire state of North Carolina with the maximum EF scale rating for each tornado shown in red.
The number of fatalities for each tornado is shown in black. Interactive map of tornado tracks and tornado statistics across central North Carolina from 16 April - The interactive map below includes summary information on each tornado available via the blue balloon and high resolution tornado track information shown in red.
View Overview Map - April 16, Central NC Tornado Outbreak in a larger map Links to additional detailed interactive maps of tornado information across central North Carolina from 16 April - The maps below were produced from a painstaking analysis of damage reports, photographs, and videos of the 16 April event.
The information used the these maps was provided by countless contributors including county and city emergency management officials, law enforcement and public safety personnel, media, military, storm spotters and the general public.
These maps contain separate pieces of information including damage photographs and individual specific reports of tornado damage or tornado touchdown locations. Complete information including tracks, summaries, damage locations, fatalities, photos and videos - Google Map kml file Tornado tracks with a summary for each tornado - Google Map kml file Damage locations with tornado tracks - Google Map kml file Fatality location and information with tornado tracks - Google Map kml file Selected photos with tornado tracks - Google Map kml file Selected videos with tornado tracks - Google Map kml file Tornado Warnings with tornado tracks - Google Map kml file.
These four supercells were actually responsible for as many as 17 of the 30 total tornadoes across North Carolina on 16 April. The tornado tracks are shown in red in the map to the right and the path of each of the tornadic supercells is shown with the purple highlighting.
A number identifying each supercell that moved through central North Carolina is shown in blue. A table summarizing the various statistics for each tornado along with the supercell ID is shown in the chart below. During the next hour, this thunderstorm along with other storms across the western Carolinas would grow into an organized line of convection.
As the low level instability increased , the thunderstorms became more intense by around PM. The broken line of thunderstorms continued to intensify and move east with embedded thunderstorms developing into supercells with persistent rotating updrafts.
The same complex cluster of thunderstorms that produced the tornadoes in Davie and Rowan Counties weakened slightly as they moved across Davidson and Guilford Counties between around PM and PM. The weak low-level rotation across eastern Guilford County at PM quickly strengthened as the storm moved into northwestern Alamance County at PM when a tornado touched down around 6 miles northwest of Graham. The tornado moved across northwestern Alamance County with the storm relative velocity imagery becoming very impressive at PM.
The tornado remained on the ground for another few minutes before exiting Alamance County at around PM and entering Caswell County. The tornado remained on the ground for another few miles in Caswell County before dissipating.
The parent supercell weakened slightly but still maintained a broad area of rotation as it moved across eastern Caswell County. As the supercell moved into western Person County, the rotation strengthened while the reflectivity structure improved.
The tornado remained on the ground for 10 minutes and nearly 10 miles before the storm weakened and moved into Virginia. The thunderstorm intensified as it moved into North Carolina and approached Wadesboro. The storm then became a supercell as it developed a persistent rotating updraft as it moved into Moore County just after PM. At PM the storm produced a tornado in northeastern Moore County. The storm weakened a bit as it moved through downtown Raleigh before intensifying as it moved across northeastern parts of the city.
The thunderstorm associated with Sanford-Raleigh Tornado weakened somewhat as it moved across Franklin County but it remained strong as it moved through Warren County into southern Halifax County with no confirmed tornado damage. The storm intensified markedly during the next few minutes and by the next volume scan the storm relative velocity imagery was indicating a new and intensifying area of rotation with an impressive reflectivity pattern.
At PM, both the storm relative velocity imagery and the reflectivity imagery had become even more alarming with a strong velocity couplet approaching Roanoke Rapids. Just a few minutes later, an EF-2 tornado touched down in the city. This thunderstorm was rather strong as it moved northeast across northern and northeastern South Carolina exhibiting periods of strong radar signatures with reports of damaging winds and hail.
As the thunderstorm moved into far southern North Carolina near Cheraw at around PM , it began to strengthen. The thunderstorm exhibited broad rotation across central Hoke County at PM with a fairly impressive reflectivity signature. The first tornado that this supercell would produce touched down near the Wayside and Johnson Mills communities at around PM. The reflectivity image and storm relative velocity image was very impressive and well defined at PM.
The storm maintained an impressive structure as it moved south of interstate 95 in the PM reflectivity image and storm relative velocity image. As the tornado crossed interstate 95 for the second time and approached Smithfield, a secondary area of rotation developed near U. After the tornado went through Smithfield, it abruptly dissipated as a new tornado was forming to the southeast.
The Fayetteville-Smithfield, Micro, and Wilson tornadic supercell developed a new updraft just as the first tornado was approaching Smithfield. The PM radar imagery not only shows a new updraft developing to the northeast of Smithfield but also a new low level circulation developing to the east of the weakening circulation associated with the first tornado.
This is a remarkable image that shows both the weakening circulation from the first tornado and an intensifying circulation associated with the second tornado. The low level circulation weakened a few minutes later and the tornado dissipated after being on the ground for around 3 miles. Around 10 minutes after the Micro Tornado dissipates, the same supercell featured broad low level rotation and a modest reflectivity pattern. As the supercell approached Wilson, a small but tightening low level circulation developed at PM with a reflectivity appendage.
This thunderstorm intensified after it moved east of Columbia and approached Darlington and Florence. The tornado moved northeast crossing into southwestern Sampson County and weakened slightly. As the storm moved to the north of Clinton, the circulation strengthened while the reflectivity pattern remained impressive. The circulation subsequently weakened and the tornado dissipated at around PM.
The same supercell continued to move northeast across Sampson County and then produced a relatively brief tornado as it moved across northern Duplin County near Faison. As the supercell moved into and across southern Wayne County, the storm relative velocity signature was generally convergent while the reflectivity pattern showed a developing appendage. Just before the storm was about to exit Wayne County, the storm relative velocity and especially the reflectivity pattern became more impressive on radar.
An EF-0 tornado touched down near Parkstown and was on the ground for a mile before exiting Wayne County and moving into Greene County. The Storm Prediction Center SPC highlighted the possibility of strong storms in longer range outlooks, and they began offering more specified outlooks starting with the Day 3 forecast, issued the preceding Wednesday night. Throughout the week, forecasters knew that if the models were correct in showing all of these mechanisms coming together during the daytime, when heating would likely provide the instability needed for intense storms, a significant outbreak of severe weather was possible.
This threat was raised to 45 percent by early Friday afternoon. As confidence in a potential major severe weather event increased, WFO Raleigh forecasters offered strongly-worded statements and discussions providing more specifics on the most likely storm threat tornadoes as well as the location and timing of the severe weather. The first detailed online weather briefing, focused on alerting the public, emergency managers, and other officials , was prepared and posted on our web page the morning of Friday 15, April.
Recent advances in NWP and in computational efficiency have resulted in an improvement in and the availability of high resolution model forecasts on the convective scale. An example of the opportunities that high resolution NWP can provide is shown in the image to the right click on the image to enlarge. A major tornadic outbreak was becoming a near certainty. On Saturday morning, forecasters at WFO Raleigh and SPC issued statements and alerts that emphasized the unique and serious dangers presented by this particular weather pattern.
In particular, in the hours before storms developed and moved into central NC, low level instability was increasing rapidly , low level shear was very strong , and lifted condensation levels were low, a little more than one half kilometer which is a condition which research has shown is supportive of the development and maintenance of significant tornadoes.
This sounding combined with other observations and analysis from the early afternoon hours on 16 April confirmed that the environment that was predicted for several days had materialized and that a significant severe weather event would soon be underway.
Evolution from a Squall Line to Discrete Supercells The evolution of the convective mode from a long linear structure to multiple discrete supercells on 16 April was unusual. Often times, convection will grow upscale from individual cells, to multicells, and then into a line of convection or squall line as the convectively induced cold pools merge and interact. This event was rather remarkable in that no discrete supercells developed ahead of the line, rather the squall line fractured into several discrete long lived tornadic supercells.
The squall line moved quickly east, advancing off of and out ahead of the slow moving cold front. The outflow behind the squall line was not especially cold; outflow temperature deficits ranged around 5 degrees C, which is common in environments with high relative humidity in the boundary layer.
Anecdotal experience of forecasters at the NWS Raleigh is that some of the most significant tornado events, including those with long track tornadoes, November Raleigh tornado , November tornadoes , and the March tornadoes , occur with rich boundary layer moisture, often at night when the lack of convective mixing keeps the boundary layer moist.
Radar imagery indicated very little trailing stratiform precipitation behind the squall line. This suggests that the support or maintenance of the cold pool was limited, and that the squall line was potentially missing a component to sustaining itself. It is interesting to note that very little if any intense convection developed ahead of the squall line. The limited amount of convection that did develop ahead of the squall line was weak and dissipated fairly quickly.
One thought is that the strong vertical wind shear had a detrimental effect on the developing updrafts and essentially tilted and ripped the immature convection apart. This helps to explain why the few showers that developed ahead of the line failed to intensify and fell apart. It could be argued that the larger scale forcing at the mid and upper levels and the surface cold front were sufficient to initiate and intensify the convection in a region of potentially hostile shear.
Once the convection matured, it was able to race ahead of the cold front and survive in the strongly sheared environment. It has been shown that the component of the km low-level environmental shear oriented perpendicular to a squall line is one of the most important factors in the line's evolution.
Long-lived squall lines can be expected when the wind shear is perpendicular to the line while squall lines with little or no line-normal shear will likely be shorter-lived and promote more discrete cells. The low-level shear vectors during this event were largely parallel to the squall line. The large vertical wind shear, strongly curved clockwise hodographs, and minimal low-level line-normal shear appeared to strongly favor discrete supercells. It can be argued that the environmental shear played a significant role in the evolution of the convection.
As the squall line pushed east, the line began to fracture and discrete supercells emerged. The 16 April outbreak was comprised of 30 tornadoes including five EF-3 and eight EF-2 tornadoes and resulted in 24 fatalities. The 28 March Tornado Outbreak is the only precedent during the 20th or 21st century of an event of this size, intensity, destruction, and fatalities. The March tornado outbreak impacted around 20 counties in eastern North Carolina whereas the outbreak impacted 37 counties across central and eastern North Carolina.
The Raleigh tornado which touched down on 28 November was rated an F It was the only tornado that night but it killed 4 people and injured residents. The 5 May tornado outbreak produced only 11 tornadoes, but they were generally more intense, including three F-4 tornadoes and they resulted in 5 fatalities in North Carolina.
An outbreak on 15 April produced 18 tornadoes, all of them were F-2 or weaker and there were no deaths in the state. More recently, an outbreak on 7 May produced 20 tornadoes in North Carolina, including one F-4 and one F-3, but the other tornadoes during that event were considerably weaker and short-lived and no fatalities were reported. Finally, Hurricane Floyd's landfall on 15 September resulted in 17 tornadoes, all of them were F-2 or weaker, and there were no fatalities.
Chris Broyles from the Storm Prediction Center put together an image click here to open that shows the years with the longest tornado tracks since The longest track tornadoes in North Carolina during this period are from , , , and On 16 April , two tornadoes were long tracked and were on the ground for more than 55 miles each.
The Sanford-Raleigh Tornado was on the ground for 67 miles and the Fayetteville-Smithfield Tornado was on the ground for nearly 59 miles. Log in Register. Search titles only. Search Advanced search…. Latest reviews. Search resources. Log in. Install the app. Change style. Contact us. Close Menu. JavaScript is disabled.
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You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Upcoming Events. Donington Park 1. Author tomj Creation date Jun 16, Overview Updates 1 Reviews 29 History Discussion.
Ask a question Reviews 29 History. Latest updates Update v1. Read more…. Latest reviews michael opp 5. I don't know this track well enough to give it a fair review However thank you very much for your time. Upvote 0 Downvote. Deswribilator 5. Donington Park is one of my favorite tracks because of the way you need to drive it.
T1 hard on the breaks slowing to the apex and then gradual power out heading down hill out of T2 where you get very light and almost float through T3, 4 and 5 easing your way through T6.
Carry too much speed out of 2 or use too much break in T4 and you'll find yourself cutting grass and not recovering till T6 or 7. Power your way through T8 and control your speed through T9 and 10 up hill to T11 with a double apex over the bump to a quick left right pushing hard to the almost double apex hairpin. Don't over drive coming out of the hairpin as you'll have to hit the breaks hard to make a degree left to the front straight. I love driving Retro cars at Donington Park because they drift and float their way around.
I gave this track 5 Stars for several reasons; Graphics and penalty. Graphics are full and rich plus the off track penalty range allows for some mistakes without assessing a penalty.
Grand Tourist 5. I like this version better than the latest new version of this track, created from scratch by someone else.
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