EF0 tornado, Deaneyville, Arkansas, May 16, 2020

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 16, 2020

Touchdown

6:46 PM CDT (23:46 UTC)

Lifted

6:47 PM CDT (23:47 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Hempstead County

Touchdown point

33.868, -93.522

Lift-off point

33.874, -93.525

Record number

2005161746-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

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

A slow moving upper level low pressure system drifted east across Central and Eastern Texas during the daytime hours of May 16th. Meanwhile, the attendant surface low pressure system over East Central Texas drifted east into Northeast Texas during the afternoon, with a southerly low level jet allowing for a warm front to mix north into East Texas, extreme Northern Louisiana, into Southern Arkansas through the evening. Although daytime heating was limited due to extensive cloud cover and periods of showers, large scale forcing and adequate low level wind shear contributed to the development of numerous low-topped supercell showers and a few thunderstorms, several of which spawned tornadoes and wall clouds across portions of extreme Northeast Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Southeast Oklahoma throughout the afternoon and evening. As drier air began to entrain ahead of this upper low pressure system, and the warm front had shifted north into the northern sections of Southwest Arkansas by mid-evening, the tornado threat subsided considerably.

An EF-0 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 70 mph briefly touched down as it was crossing Highway 371 east of Blevins. It downed a few large tree limbs, one of which fell across the road and was documented through pictures posted to social media.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:45 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:03 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:27 UTC and running to 02:00 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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.

The Little Rock radar (KLZK), 158 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:48 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

12 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.