Four tornadoes are found in the SPC Database for August 7, 2003. Two were in Palm Beach County, FL. The NWS Miami summary described this event as “unusual” for August to see such a strong tornado form in South Florida.
From the summary, “The tornadoes apparently occurred with back-building thunderstorms developing along a sea-breeze convergence line reinforced by thunderstorm outflow boundaries from the southwest and west. The tornadoes also occurred in a very low shear environment, which is unusual because it’s harder to get strong tornadoes without shear in the environment. Therefore, in order to produce a tornado in such an environment, everything must come together just right including some interaction with a boundary of some kind. There are almost never cold fronts in South Florida in the summer, and the jet stream is almost always removed far to the north, so boundaries in South Florida in the summer are usually limited to thunderstorm outflow boundaries and the sea breeze convergence line. Even if everything comes together just right…it’s still quite unusual to get such a strong tornado producing such damage in August in South Florida!
The summary also stated that some of the damage was very close to being classified F2. They estimated though that max winds were near 100 mph (upper F1 range). This upper F1 damage was found at A Garden Walk mobile home park. A total of 58 homes (most mobile homes) were destroyed. Several cars and trucks were overturned. There were 28 minor injuries.
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