HORRY COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – Meteorologists from the National Weather Service office in Wilmington, North Carolina, have been surveying reported tornado damage all over the county since Hurricane Dorian left the Carolinas.
NWS officially confirmed on Monday that an EF-1 tornado traveled 4.7 miles in nine minutes and caused damage in The Retreat neighborhood of Little River. Meteorologists say the tornado’s damage is consistent with 105 mph winds. This is the strongest of the three confirmed tornadoes in the county during Dorian.
Once the storm leaves and cleanup begins, NWS looks at videos like this one from North Myrtle Beach and visits damaged neighborhoods like The Retreat to see if what actually happened was a tornado.
“We look at everything,” said Mike Kochasic, who’s a meteorologist for NWS in Wilmington. “We look at the damage to houses. The trees, especially, are helpful because they tend to be the most consistent way to show the different rotations of the damage.”
After Dorian, Kochasic visited reported tornado damage in Horry, Brunswick and New Hanover counties. He surveyed The Retreat on Saturday.
He takes pictures, puts qualitative findings into an app on his iPad, and interviews residents. With this information, he can help ultimately confirm if what caused the damage was technically a tornado.
Kochasic says meteorologists look for damage from circular winds, instead of straight winds, on things like trees and signs.
“For tornadoes, (trees and signs) face a certain path,” he said. “They face towards where the path of the tornado was. On one side, it might be leaning to the left, one side might be leaning to the right.”
Kochasic says these storm reports give more research to forecasters, which is especially needed when NWS issues very precise tornado warnings, sometimes right down to the street.
“We don’t necessarily see tornadoes on radar,” he said. “We just see circulation centers. Sometimes that correlates to a tornado, a lot of times it does not. It’s very important to get ground truth, reports from people actually in the neighborhoods that have damage.”
Two EF-0 tornadoes were also confirmed in the county. One was confirmed on Saturday in North Myrtle Beach, the other was confirmed on Monday near Socastee. All three tornadoes touched down Thursday morning.
NWS meteorologists from Wilmington are still studying damage reports in North Carolina. The office says, however, that it doesn’t expect to confirm any more tornadoes in Horry County, unless it receives a new report to investigate.
If you’d like to report possible tornado damage, send an email to Steven Pfaff, who’s the warning coordinator for NWS in Wilmington, at steven.pfaff@noaa.gov.
