EF0 tornado, Gorum, Louisiana, May 19, 2019

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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. 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

EF0

Date

May 19, 2019

Touchdown

2:02 AM CDT (07:02 UTC)

Lifted

2:05 AM CDT (07:05 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (1.9 km)

Path width

80 yards (73 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Natchitoches Parish

Touchdown point

31.373, -92.999

Lift-off point

31.384, -92.983

Record number

1905190102-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

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

A shortwave trough entered the Southern Plains during the morning hours of May 18th, and began to take on a negative tilt as it approached East Texas during the afternoon and evening. Meanwhile, an associated cold front began to shift southeast across Central Oklahoma and portions of North Texas, with the dry line having mixed east ahead of the front into Central Texas. Warm, moist, and unstable air surged north across the warm sector of Northern and Eastern Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, Southwest Arkansas, and North Louisiana, with large scale forcing spreading east across this area ahead of the trough such that numerous severe thunderstorms with damaging winds developed across East Texas, and spread across much of North Louisiana during the evening and overnight hours on the 18th-19th. An isolated tornado also touched down in extreme Southern Natchitoches Parish during the early morning hours of May 19th. These storms began to move repeatedly over the same areas during the early morning hours of the 19th, with instances of flash flooding reported as well. These storms eventually diminished just prior to daybreak on the 19th.

An EF-0 tornado with maximum estimated winds near 70 mph touched down along Kisatchie-Mora Road, about three miles west of the Mora community, where it snapped a few large tree branches. The tornado continued northeast as it paralleled Wilma Cedars Road snapping several more large branches. The tornado lifted after it snapped a few more large branches along the Mora-Gorum Road just north of Wilma Cedars Road.

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 07:02 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 07:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 06:48 UTC and running to 08:30 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:02 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.

Peason Ridge - Ft Polk (AQV), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Ft Polk radar (KPOE), 25 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 07:04 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

19 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.