On Monday April 6th, 2009 at 1040 AM, an EF-2 tornado touched down across southern Bladen County in North Carolina. The location was about 5 miles southeast of Clarkton. The tornado was on the ground for approximately 2 minutes with estimated wind speeds of 115 mph. The path width was 100 yards with a total path length of 1.5 miles. No injuries were reported with the tornado. The National Weather Service in Wilmington, NC issued a tornado warning at 1032 am, 8 minutes prior to the first touchdown.

Below you will find a slideshow of the damage from the Bladen County tornado along with a detailed map of the storm track. Below the storm damage slideshow you will see radial velocity images from the KLTX radar located in Shallotte, NC. Radial velocity images are one of the products we use to help determine rotation in the atmosphere. The red colors on this image are winds blowing away from the radar site. Looking at the scale at the top, the brighter red colors indicate a stronger wind speed blowing away from the radar. The other main color on this image is green and this indicates winds toward the radar. The brighter the shade of the green, the stronger the wind is blowing toward the radar. To determine strong rotation, we look for very bright red and green colors next to each other. Use the circles as a guide.