2017 Mount Dora, Florida Tornado

The 2017 Mount Dora, Florida Tornado was a violent and destructive, EF5-rated tornado that struck Mount Dora, Florida in the afternoon hours of May 23, 2017. In all, 245 people were killed, along with 406 injuries, and $2 billion (2017 USD) in damages.

Initially a weak, pencil-like tornado upon touchdown in Eustis, the funnel rapidly intensified into a violent 3/4-mile-wide multi-vortex storm at around 3:37 pm EDT. The first intense damage occurred six minutes later as a line of 13 homes on Britt road were swept away, and an orchid nursery was demolished as well. The tornado reached its peak width as it struck the Lake and Golf Realty subdivision of Mount Dora as a slow-moving wedge tornado, completely destroying the neighborhood.

The tornado produced extreme ground scouring, as the earth at and around the Lake and Golf Realty subdivision was scoured out to a depth of 22 in (55.88 cm), reducing lush fields of grass and trees to wide expanses of mud. Extensive amounts of asphalt was torn from the roads down to the subgrade in the damage path. Over 1,000 structures were completely destroyed by the tornado and hundreds of vehicles were rendered unrecognizable after being thrown great distances, some more than half a mile. Some of the vehicles were pulverized into many pieces and strewn across fields or the town, and others were simply never found. The vehicles that remained relatively intact were sandblasted and completely caked with mud and grass. Telephone poles in the area were snapped off at the base and splintered, and trees were completely shredded and debarked. Many of the homes in the tornado's path were fairly new and well-constructed and bolted to their foundations, but the tornado left only the concrete slabs, and there was virtually no debris left throughout most of the damage path.

The debris from the destroyed homes was finely granulated into small fragments, and scattered for long distances across the area. The tornado also picked up large amounts of loose soil as it deeply scoured the ground, producing a sandblasting effect on the houses and their occupants. The tornado's slow forward movement combined with its extreme intensity were likely the main factors as to why the damage it produced was so remarkably intense. Overall, were 245 human fatalities and over 400 injuries from this tornado.