So far, officials at the National Weather Service have confirmed 15 tornadoes touched down across Virginia Friday. The number could climb too, as crews are still surveying storm damage.
The strongest tornado confirmed so far was an EF – 3 with top winds of just under 160 miles per hour that touched down Friday morning in Franklin County.
“You just need a little bit of instability, a little bit of warmth and moisture in the low levels and then the wind shear is really what drives these storms to all begin to get some rotation,” says Steve Keighton with the Blacksburg NWS office. “It was just pretty much a classic setup for tornadic storms.”
Keighton says the high volume of storms made for a challenging forecast.
“Some of these storms have been very small and far enough from the radar that they will show some degree of spin, but we really can’t see down to the surface, so we issue a lot of tornado warnings thinking the conditions are favorable," he says. "The storm certainly could spin one up, and many of them haven’t. Of course we did have a few on Friday and one was very significant.”
He says a tornado warning represents a real threat, and the public should always take action and go to a safe place in your house or place of business.
