Unwarned Tornado Strikes West Central Howard County This Past Monday

A brief, weak tornado touched down on Monday in the Glenwood area of Howard county at around 4:30pm. Radar showed a clear hook echo and velocity couplet, which indicated enough rotation that given the background environmental conditions, a tornado was likely ongoing. This along with amazing corroborating video footage of the actual tornado taken by Angela Graboski, confirm that a tornado did occur.

Below is a screenshot from Angela’s video showing the tornado in contact with the ground. Based on her POV, the tornado likely occured in a wooded area just north of the Cattail Country Club. Given this, the area could not be surveyed for damage due to its inaccessibility.

This is a look at the radar scan at the time the video was taken using the lowest tilt of the TIAD radar out of Dulles. This clearly shows the hook echo and rotational couplet associated with the tornado, which is collocated with where the tornado was in the video.

Due to the fact that this tornado occured in an area that could not be surveyed for damage, there is no way to assign an EF rating. So for that reason, we would rate it as EF-U, where U stands for unknown. Had this occured in an area that could be surveyed, the damage likely would have been minor, and was probably no stronger than EF-0 intensity.