EF1 tornado, Union Hill, Arkansas, April 27, 2014

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

EF1

Date

April 27, 2014

Touchdown

8:52 PM CDT (01:52 UTC)

Lifted

8:53 PM CDT (01:53 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.4 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$20,000

County

Independence County

Touchdown point

35.544, -91.552

Lift-off point

35.552, -91.541

Record number

1404271952-01

13 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LZK, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 109 mph.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A round of showers and thunderstorms occurred during the morning of the 27th. Some of the storms produced hail in central Arkansas. New storms during the afternoon dropped hail in the northern and western parts of the state. The cool outflow from the morning storms left a boundary draped across the middle of the state. This boundary separated cool air to the north and much warmer air to the south. During the evening, as a strong area of low pressure approached, a supercell erupted rapidly along the boundary. Altogether, the supercell produced five separate tornadoes, the first of which was rated EF4 and killed 16 people. It was the deadliest single tornado in Arkansas since 1968. Nearly 200 people were treated at hospitals.||Large amounts of rain fell over the northeastern quarter of the state. For the 24-hour period ending at 7 AM on the 28th, some of the larger totals included 7.60 inches at Batesville Lock and Dam (Independence Co.), 6.10 inches at Calamine (Sharp Co.), 5.34 inches at Evening Shade (Sharp Co.), 5.05 inches at Melbourne (Izard Co.), 4.46 inches at Hardy (Sharp Co.), 4.18 inches at Blanchard Springs (Stone Co.), 3.96 inches at Armstead Mountain (Pope Co.), 3.95 inches at Saddle (Fulton Co.), 3.92 inches at Poughkeepsie (Sharp Co.), 3.91 inches at Greers Ferry Dam (Cleburne Co.), and 3.72 inches at Mountain View (Stone Co.).||President Barack Obama declared a disaster in the following counties: Faulkner, Pulaski, White, Cleburne, Independence, Jackson, Izard, Sharp, and Fulton.

An EF1 tornado blew down trees and power lines. This was the fifth of five tornadoes produced by the same supercell thunderstorm.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

14 minutes of warning. NWS LZK issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:38 UTC, 14 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:26 UTC and running to 07:00 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 01:00 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

Batesville (Awos) (BVX), 22 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Little Rock radar (KLZK), 102 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:50 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2014 tornado in ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are

16 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.