EF1 tornado, Crossett Muni Arpt, Arkansas, May 11, 2023

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 11, 2023

Touchdown

12:41 PM CDT (17:41 UTC)

Lifted

12:43 PM CDT (17:43 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.7 km)

Path width

140 yards (128 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$40,000

County

Ashley County

Touchdown point

33.147, -91.819

Lift-off point

33.153, -91.815

Record number

2305111141-01

8 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JAN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 107 mph.

• Metal siding and roof damage on the backside of a home

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

A compact weather system moved through the region on Thursday May 11th and brought a round of severe storms during the late morning and afternoon hours. Most of the events were damaging winds but there were a few instances of hail and one tornado in SE Arkansas.

A tornado touched down east of Crossett and south of Hamburg near Highway 425, where it snapped and scattered tree limbs across the property of a community church. The tornado continued along Highway 425 as it uprooted hardwood and softwood trees along the forest line. It then damaged the roof of a house along Highway 425, where it also snapped the trunk of a softwood tree and uprooted several trees in the yard of the residence. The tornado continued northeast, crossing Highway 425, where it struck another residence. A wooden car port was blown across the yard, along with a portion of the roof being damaged on the house. Several large, hardwood trees were uprooted on the far northeastern edge of the property. The tornado weakened and lifted shortly after crossing Ashley County Road 97, where small limbs were scattered across the road. Estimated peak wind speeds were 107 mph.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 14:25 UTC and running to 19:52 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:41 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), 192 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:40 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 2023 tornado in ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are

32 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.