EF1 tornado, Springhill, Louisiana, March 9, 2019

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

March 9, 2019

Touchdown

11:24 AM CST (17:24 UTC)

Lifted

11:28 AM CST (17:28 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.3 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Webster Parish

Touchdown point

32.995, -93.468

Lift-off point

33.000, -93.455

Record number

1903091124-01

17 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 107 mph.

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

A large upper level trough moved out of the Intermountain West and into the Southern Plains during the early morning hours of March 9th, taking on a negative tilt as it lifted east northeast across much of Central and Eastern Texas into Northern Louisiana and Southwest Arkansas. The trough allowed for a dry line to mix east across Central and Eastern Oklahoma, as well as Central Texas, into a region of moderate instability produced by a surge of very warm and moist air north from the Gulf of Mexico. As large scale forcing increased during the morning hours of the 9th, showers and thunderstorms, some of which were severe, developed and spread east northeast across Southeast Oklahoma, Southwest Arkansas, portions of Northeast Texas, and North Louisiana. Damaging winds downed trees across portions of Northwest Louisiana, with NWS storm surveys confirming three tornado touchdowns across Northern Caddo, Bossier, and Webster Parishes before the storms weakened by early afternoon.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum estimated winds near 105 mph touched down near Park Loop on the west side of Springhill, where it uprooted trees and damaged the roofs of an outbuilding on the grounds of Brown Middle School and continued on to damage the covered porch and roof of a single family home. The tornado then crossed South Main Street and downed power lines near the Panda Garden before moving over the Piggly Wiggly and Lumberjack Lanes bowling alley. Behind the bowling alley, the tornado downed approximately 30 trees in a neighborhood between South Park Drive and Center Park Drive in Springhill before lifting.

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

0 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 17:24 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 17:46 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:05 UTC and running to 21:00 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:14 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.

Minden (MNE), 42 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 70 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:24 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 2019 tornado in LouisianaEvery tornado in Louisiana since 1950Warnings in force in Louisiana nowThe forecast where you are

11 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.