EF2 tornado, Brookings to Rector Muni Arpt, Arkansas, March 14, 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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

March 14, 2025

Touchdown

12:16 AM CDT (05:16 UTC)

Lifted

12:34 AM CDT (05:34 UTC)

On the ground

18 minutes

Path length

13.8 miles (22.1 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

4

Property damage

$2.0 million

Counties

Craighead and Greene counties

Touchdown point

35.960, -90.700

Lift-off point

36.055, -90.483

Record number

2503142316-01

79 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS MEG, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 125 mph.

• Roofing material from home also removed.
• Cannot rate. Home was damaged in 2024 tornado and not repaired
• With shingle damage to house
• One power pole down. Nothing else around to support.

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

An upper low over the Central Plains moved into the Upper Mississippi Valley during the evening hours of Friday, March 14, 2025. Increasing moisture advection ahead of an approaching cold front lifted dewpoints into the low to mid 60s. This coupled with increasing height falls and a mid-level 80 knot jet rotating around the main upper low supported severe thunderstorm development. Large looping hodographs, MLCAPE values over 2000 J/kg, 60 knots of bulk shear, and 0-1 km SRH values between 250 and 350 m2/s2 supported an all hazards threat. Storm mode during the overnight hours was supercellular with large hail, damaging winds and several tornadoes, a few of which were strong (EF2+), mainly across northeast Arkansas, the Missouri Bootheel and northeast Mississippi. ||The main upper low lifted into the western Great Lakes Region by early Saturday morning, March 15, 2025. The cold front stalled just to the west of the Mississippi River. Simultaneously, a neutrally-tilted longwave trough moved across the Southern Plains and pushed a 100 knot mid-level jet into the region. This placed West Tennessee and north Mississippi beneath the left exit region of the jet with widespread lift and diffluence available. As a result, showers and thunderstorms rapidly redeveloped across north Mississippi and parts of West Tennessee Saturday morning. Storms quickly formed into a line that slowly moved east. The line of storms produced damaging winds, large hail and a weak tornado Saturday morning. The airmass ahead of the line became even more favorable for severe storms by Saturday afternoon with MLCAPE values increasing to 1500 J/kg and 0-1km SRH values reaching 300 m2/s2 as a surface low moving along the cold front and backed surface winds across northeast Mississippi. Discrete supercells formed ahead of the line during the afternoon producing a couple of weak tornadoes and damaging winds over parts of northeast Missisisppi. Flash flooding was also common due to the slow moving nature of the system.

A tornado crossed from northern Craighead County into Greene County and continued northeast where additional tree damage was noted. Some of the gaps in damage indicators over areas that were difficult to access were filled in using Sentinel satellite data. As the tornado approached Paragould, the tornado intensified just before Pruetts Chapel Road causing damage in the Club View Estates and The Enclave communities. Multiple homes have significant roof damage. A few homes in the Club View Estates neighborhood were impacted by a tornado for the second time in 10 months. A home on South 34th Street had several first-story walls collapsed into the home, with the entire second floor collapsed on itself. An additional home on Enclave Circle had large sections of the brick exterior collapsed inward on the home with about half of the second floor and roof missing. The tornado continued to the northeast, causing damage to a two-story home on Valley South Drive with large sections of the second floor collapsed inward or missing. The tornado moved northeast onto Park Ridge Drive, with additional roof damage and trees uprooted. The tornado continued along Chateau Blvd causing minor damage to an assisted living building and uprooting more trees. After crossing Highway 49, Clove Circle was impacted with a home losing its roof and causing some minor brick damage to the home. The tornado intensified again near West Mueller Street, causing significant damage to a home. The tornado continued northeast along West Park Street causing a few homes to lose portions of their roofs and uprooting multiple trees. As the tornado crossed Highway 412, multiple metal building systems were damaged. Damage included a partially collapsed outbuilding, roof damage to multiple buildings, and debris being tracked to the northeast. No additional damage was noted beyond this area. Tornado damage is consistent with an EF-2 tornado with 125 mph winds in Paragould.

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

16 minutes of warning. NWS MEG issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:00 UTC, 16 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:27 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:34 UTC and running to 07:35 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 01:01 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 Memphis radar (KNQA), 98 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:18 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

53 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.