It was tiny, but it was a twister.

The National Weather Service’s storm damage assessment team visited Lincoln County Tuesday and confirmed home and property damage caused by a Monday afternoon storm on Chatmon Trail Northeast were from a low-powered tornado. David Cox, a meteorologist with the NWS Jackson office, said the storm was classified as an F-0.

“They did find a very weak tornado,” he said. “We can tell from videos it definitely looked like rotation. We really don’t get a lot of tornados during the summer, and most of the ones we do get come from tropical systems. With this being a weak tropical disturbance, it brought in a lot of moisture and that’s where we get ‘em.”

Cox said Monday’s tornado had winds of 70 mph and measured around 25 yards in width. The twister carved out a .67-mile damage track before it dissipated.

The NWS initially classified the damage as a microburst.

“These kind of tropical environments with a lot of moisture in the atmosphere and the cloud based being really low, sometimes the radar will go up above them and they can be hard to spot,” Cox said.

The weak tropical system impacting southeast Texas will hang around for the next couple of days, Cox said, with chances of rain hovering around 50 percent through Thursday before the system clears out for the weekend.

“It’s just a slow mover,” he said. “We’re keeping an eye on it.”

Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Clifford Galey, who accompanied the NWS storm team Tuesday, said the tornado was “just one of those fluke things.” He doesn’t expect any more weather scares for Lincoln County this week.

“First of all, thankfully, nobody at all was hurt,” he said. “There was some damage, but it was not any major damage to homes. We’re thankful it didn’t stay down any longer than it did.”

Shannon Davis of McComb shot video with his cell phone of what appears to be the tornado forming. He and some co-workers were at Lincoln Lumber when they saw bad weather approaching from the east.

“We noticed that the storms were over there,” he said. “We happened to just glance over and saw it spinning. It started small, but it just kept getting lower. You could see the trees spinning around.”

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