EF0 tornado, Centerton to Bentonville Muni Arp, Arkansas, May 18, 2017

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   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

EF0

Date

May 18, 2017

Touchdown

12:07 AM CDT (05:07 UTC)

Lifted

12:09 AM CDT (05:09 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

2.0 miles (3.2 km)

Path width

225 yards (206 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$40,000

County

Benton County

Touchdown point

36.321, -94.253

Lift-off point

36.341, -94.228

Record number

1705182307-01

19 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SGF and NWS TSA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

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

A slow-moving, strong upper level storm system moved from the Central Rockies into the Central Plains on the 18th and 19th. A dry line sharpened ahead of this system across western Oklahoma by early afternoon on the 18th, as a frontal boundary over northern Oklahoma shifted north into Kansas as a warm front. Warm, very moist, and very unstable air was in place east of the dry line and south of the warm front, and thunderstorms erupted across western Oklahoma during the early afternoon near the dry line. These storms evolved into a line by the time they moved into and across northwestern Arkansas during the late evening hours. The storms produced a tornado, damaging wind, and hail up to quarter size as they moved across northwestern Arkansas.||A couple additional rounds of thunderstorms on the 19th through the early morning hours of the 20th resulted in isolated flooding to develop across portions of northwest Arkansas.

This tornado damaged the roofs of a number of homes, uprooted trees, snapped numerous large tree limbs, and blew down several power poles. Based on this damage, maximum estimated wind in the tornado was 80 to 85 mph.

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

35 minutes of warning. NWS TSA issued a tornado warning for this county at 04:32 UTC, 35 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 04:00 UTC and running to 06:16 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:58 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.

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 2017 tornado in ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are

47 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.