EF1 tornado, Vivian Arpt to Vivian, Louisiana, February 28, 2021

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

February 28, 2021

Touchdown

6:15 PM CST (00:15 UTC)

Lifted

6:18 PM CST (00:18 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.5 miles (2.3 km)

Path width

165 yards (151 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Caddo Parish

Touchdown point

32.891, -94.009

Lift-off point

32.898, -93.985

Record number

2102281815-01

8 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 90 mph.

• Trees were observed snapped and uprooted in a heavily wooded area looking west from Old Atlanta Road. Radar also depicted a TDS in this area as well, with this point deemed the start point of this tornado.

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

A warm front lifted north across East Texas and North Louisiana during the early morning hours of February 28th, reaching Southeast Oklahoma and the northern sections of Southwest Arkansas prior to daybreak. In its wake, a warm, moist, and unstable air mass had spread north across all of the region, ahead of a longwave trough that emerged out of the Four Corners Region and into the Plains during the afternoon. Daytime heating contributed to enough instability during the late afternoon through the evening which aided in shower and thunderstorm development once large scale forcing increased ahead of the approaching trough. One isolated severe thunderstorm developed during the early evening just ahead of an attendant cold front, which produced a brief tornado on the north side of Vivian in Northern Caddo Parish. These storms weakened by mid-evening as instability waned.

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 90 mph touched down in a heavily wooded area west of Old Atlanta Road just northwest of Vivian, snapping and uprooting numerous trees as it crossed Old Atlanta Road just south of Cross Creek Road. The tornado continued northeast snapping and uprooting additional trees before crossing a large pasture at the end of Cross Creek Road, where it ripped a portion of the roof of a single family home and damaged a nearby outbuilding. The tornado weakened shortly thereafter, but not before ripping the metal roofing off of a metal storage building, flipping a trampoline onto its side, and pushing the skirting inward on a mobile home at the end of Cane Road. The tornado then lifted shortly before crossing Pine Street/Highway 1 on the north side of Vivian.

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

8 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:07 UTC, 8 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 23:54 UTC and running to 04:00 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:58 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), 51 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:15 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 2021 tornado in LouisianaEvery tornado in Louisiana since 1950Warnings in force in Louisiana nowThe forecast where you are

1 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.