Jamesville, North Carolina tornado given rare "EF-U" rating

Monday afternoon, Tommy Augustine, a trained storm spotter and chaser, caught photos and video of a tornado in Jamesville, North Carolina. We shared one of his posts to Facebook shortly after he called it in to the local National Weather Service office.

You could tell from Augustine’s videos and others that this hit a very rural area, which turned out to be good news.

After storms cause damage, be it straight-line or tornadic, the National Weather Service will send a team to investigate the damage.

We talked about how tornadoes are given their EF-rating in a previous edition of ‘Ask the Meteorologist.’

In the case of the Jamesville tornado Monday, the National Weather Service in Newport/Morehead City assigned it a rare EF-U or EF-Unknown rating.

Their reasoning was, “No damage has been reported at any point along the supercell’s path.”

You can read their full report here.

This is why your reports, photos and videos are crucial during severe weather. You can always share those with us through ReportIt.

The EF-scale for rating tornado strength is as follows:

EF-0 – 65 to 85 mph

EF-1 – 86 to 110 mph

EF-2 – 111 to 135 mph

EF-3 – 136 to 165 mph

EF-4 – 166 to 200 mph

EF-5 – >200 mph