EF1 tornado, Retta to Lost Corner, Arkansas, March 19, 2020

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

March 19, 2020

Touchdown

8:09 PM CDT (01:09 UTC)

Lifted

8:10 PM CDT (01:10 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.3 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Pope County

Touchdown point

35.528, -92.944

Lift-off point

35.533, -92.931

Record number

2003191909-01

20 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 110 mph.

• This was some sort of farm storage building that was held onto the ground by concrete around the base of it pilings.
• A tree was uprooted and blown down onto a house. Also, a smaller tree was uprooted and damaged a camper.
• Several large trees out in a field where uprooted

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

A line of strong to severe storms developed ahead of the front, with the most robust storms closest to the Missouri border after 500 pm CST. One storm in particular went from southeast Boone County into southern Marion County and northwest Baxter County. The storm had strong rotation at times and it headed quickly to the northeast at 40 to 50 mph. There was plenty of chaos in the path of the storm, and no doubt that one or more tornadoes were in play.||A house was damaged east of Everton (Boone County), and power lines were downed. Between Pyatt and Bruno (both in Marion County), several homes were damaged or destroyed with an injury reported. A school was also affected. A tree fell through a house west of Mountain Home (Baxter County).||In the end, two tornadoes (rated EF1/EF2) were spawned in a three county area. Three more weak tornadoes (all rated EF1) were confirmed with separate storms from five miles north of Hector (Pope County) to six miles west-southwest of Rupert (Van Buren County), and from four miles northeast of Evening Shade to four miles north of Poughkeepsie (both in Sharp County). These tornadoes toppled trees and hit a couple of barns and outbuildings.||This event did not feature a lot of rain, and there was only 0.01 inch measured at Little Rock (Pulaski County) on the 19th. But, this was enough to make it eleven consecutive days with measurable precipitation. It was one day away from tying the all-time record of twelve days in a row. A trace of rain on the 20th ended the streak.

This tornado began near the Highway 27 bridge over the Middle Fork of Illinois Bayou. It uprooted and snapped several trees.

The tornado first hit on a ridgeline around 1500 feet near Napier Hollow where it downed a few trees. The tornado crossed Napier Hollow and moved back up a ridge to Dabney Road, a tree was blown onto a barn, and another smaller tree was blown onto a travel trailer. The tornado crossed Dabney Road and moved through a field and down the ridge. On Darrell Road, a storage shed was destroyed, and the roof was blown into some trees which were subsequently uprooted. The roof of a storage barn was damaged.

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

34 minutes of warning. NWS LZK issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:35 UTC, 34 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:24 UTC and running to 03:00 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:51 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.

Russellville Municipal Airport (RUE), 34 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), 99 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:06 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 2020 tornado in ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are

11 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.