Tornado outbreak of February 5–7, 2020
2020 tornado outbreak in the United States

A multi-day severe weather and tornado outbreak impacted the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States from February 5–7. A powerful upper-level trough progressed eastward across the country, intersecting an abundant supply of moist air to produce severe weather. An eastward-propagating cold front supported a damaging squall line across the Southeast U.S. on February 5–6; supercell thunderstorms ahead of this line also produced numerous tornadoes. One EF1 tornado in the pre-dawn hours of February 6 killed one person in Demopolis, Alabama. On the morning of February 7, a secondary front progressed across Maryland and Virginia, unexpectedly leading to hundreds of damaging wind reports across Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Five tornadoes were reported in the Washington, D.C., area, the most on record for a wintertime severe weather event. Across the three-day outbreak, 37 tornadoes were confirmed, including several that were strong and long-tracked. The tornado outbreak was part of a much larger storm complex that would eventually become European windstorm Storm Ciara.
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