Unrated tornado, Calion, Arkansas, June 7, 2021

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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

June 7, 2021

Touchdown

4:26 PM CDT (21:26 UTC)

Lifted

4:27 PM CDT (21:27 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.6 miles (2.5 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Union County

Touchdown point

33.330, -92.586

Lift-off point

33.343, -92.564

Record number

2106071526-01

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

• Pictures captured of funnel cloud near the ground at this location.

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

An upper low pressure system drifted north over Southeast Oklahoma and Western Arkansas during the early morning hours of June 7th, with an upper level disturbance beneath the attendant trough enhancing an area of showers and thunderstorms over Southwest Arkansas. A moist and unstable air mass was in place, with weak steering also present which resulted in slow-moving storms producing locally heavy rainfall. Rainfall amounts of 3-5 inches fell from Southern Howard County across Northern Hempstead and Nevada Counties, which resulted in flash flooding over Northern Hempstead County where several roads were flooded and closed. ||Another complex of showers and thunderstorms developed during the early morning hours of June 7th across Northwest Texas, and shifted east-southeast across North Texas throughout the morning, ahead of another shortwave trough that ejected east beneath an upper low pressure system that had begun to lift north across Southeast Oklahoma and Western Arkansas. The air mass ahead of this complex of storms across the Ark-La-Tex warmed considerably throughout the day, resulting in moderately unstable conditions within a marginally sheared environment. Thus, the storms intensified as they entered East Texas and remained severe and they progressed east across Southern Arkansas and North Louisiana. Trees and power lines were downed throughout the path of these storms, with a tornado briefly touching down just west of Calion, AR in Northeast Union County from a storm that developed ahead of the main line of storms. These storms exited Southwest Arkansas during the late afternoon hours.

A tornado briefly touched down just west of the Calion community near Ricker Road. Since this weak tornado lofted dust, grass, and dirt and no damage was found, this tornado will be rated an EF-Unknown.

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

18 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:08 UTC, 18 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:45 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:34 UTC and running to 00:00 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 19:57 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), 154 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:27 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 2021 tornado in ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are

4 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.