EF1 tornado, Cross Lake, Louisiana, November 11, 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

November 11, 2021

Touchdown

1:02 AM CST (07:02 UTC)

Lifted

1:03 AM CST (07:03 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$90,000

County

Caddo Parish

Touchdown point

32.530, -93.912

Lift-off point

32.532, -93.910

Record number

2111110102-01

18 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 104 mph.

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

A longwave trough dug into the Southern Plains from the Central and Southern Rockies during the evening through the early morning hours of November 10th-11th, which reinforced a cold front southeast into these areas. A strong low level jet ahead of the front and attendant trough allowed for moisture to deepen across much of Texas and Oklahoma, with increased large scale forcing contributing to the development of numerous showers and thunderstorms over these areas during the evening of the 10th, which organized into a squall line as it pushed east of the I-35 corridor into the Four State Region. These storms weakened as they entered the area, but re-intensified over portions of extreme Eastern Texas and Northwest Louisiana during the early morning hours of the 11th, producing several reports of wind damage which downed trees and power lines. This squall line also produced two brief tornadoes over Southern Harrison County Texas and another two brief tornadoes over Northwest Louisiana, before weakening as they moved east into North-Central Louisiana.

A brief EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 105 mph embedded within a line of severe thunderstorms briefly touched down near East Pine Island Road on the north side of Cross Lake. The tornado snapped many large softwood and hardwood trees and uprooted a few additional trees. The damage pattern was convergent along the path, leading to the determination that this damage was consistent of a tornado. A couple of trees fell on nearby outdoor sheds and one single family home causing significant damage. There was no direct structural damage from this tornado as its wind likely did not extend completely to the ground, but were low enough to damage trees.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 06:50 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 07:15 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 05:27 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), 11 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 07:00 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

4 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.