EF1 tornado, Delta to Bodcaw, Arkansas, May 16, 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

May 16, 2020

Touchdown

5:56 PM CDT (22:56 UTC)

Lifted

5:58 PM CDT (22:58 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.9 miles (3.0 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Nevada County

Touchdown point

33.531, -93.370

Lift-off point

33.556, -93.384

Record number

2005161656-01

43 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 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.

This is the continuation of the Columbia County EF-1 tornado. This tornado, which had reached its peak intensity near 100 mph as it crossed Highway 355 in Northern Columbia County, weakened slightly to 95 mph as it crossed over into Southern Nevada County, where it continued to uproot several trees along Nevada 2 Road before lifting. The total path length of this tornado from Northern Columbia into Southern Nevada Counties was 2.65 miles.

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds around 90 mph touched down near Highway 32, where it uprooted a few trees and snapped several large limbs. After crossing the highway, it moved northwest to near Nevada 15 where it picked up a metal overhang and threw it approximately 150 yards over a home and into a nearby field. The tornado also snapped and uprooted several hardwood and softwood trees near this location. It also uprooted several more trees as it crossed Nevada 15 and then lifted near the intersection of Nevada 120 and Nevada 15 in the Bodcaw community.

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

37 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:19 UTC, 37 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:00 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 Shreveport radar (KSHV), 129 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:56 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.