EF1 tornado, Lake Erling, Arkansas, April 2, 2025

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

April 2, 2025

Touchdown

7:17 PM CDT (00:17 UTC)

Lifted

7:18 PM CDT (00:18 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Lafayette County

Touchdown point

33.176, -93.527

Lift-off point

33.176, -93.523

Record number

2504021817-01

22 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

• 7 poles snapped, 1 leaning south. Visible confirmation of touchdown from EM.
• Multiple poles snapped near and above transmission line.
• 3 poles snapped. Partial removal of metal roof.
• 2 trees snapped at a church. Width point. End track.

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

A warm and unstable air mass was in place across the Ark-La-Tex region on April 2nd ahead of an approaching cold front. With MLCAPE values near 2000 J/kg, along with strong effective bulk shear and steep mid-level lapse rates, isolated strong to severe thunderstorms rapidly developed and intensified along the front as it moved along the Interstate 30 corridor of Southwest Arkansas during the afternoon and evening hours. Multiple hazards were reported with these storms, which included two separate EF-1 tornadoes in Lafayette County along with a strong downburst in Columbia County.

A brief EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 95 mph touched down over a wooded area just west of Highway 53 and just south of Lafayette Road 249, where multiple trees were uprooted. This tornado crossed Highway 53 and snapped/uprooted several additional trees and tree tops before lifting.

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

24 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:53 UTC, 24 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:49 UTC and running to 03:38 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. 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), 86 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:19 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 2025 tornado in ArkansasEvery tornado in Arkansas since 1950Warnings in force in Arkansas nowThe forecast where you are

87 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 88 of them

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.