EF1 tornado, Melba to Pickering, Mississippi, March 11, 2026

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, as surveyed

EF1, preliminary

Date

March 11, 2026

Touchdown

9:10 PM CDT (02:10 UTC)

Lifted

9:11 PM CDT (02:11 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.1 miles (1.8 km)

Path width

400 yards (366 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Covington County

Touchdown point

31.506, -89.447

Lift-off point

31.511, -89.430

Highest wind the damage implies

90 mph

Surveyed by

NWS JAN

The office's name for it

Okatoma Creek Tornado

Survey last edited

March 30, 2026

Record number

None yet. SPC numbers 2026 in the spring of 2027.

An EF-1 tornado began just west of Okatoma Creek, uprooting several trees. The tornado continued northeast and ended just east of Old Highway 49, uprooting a few more trees.

Written by NWS JAN in the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit. A survey is revised as better evidence arrives.

An organized line of storms was able to tap into a favorable environmental shear profile to produce several swaths of significant wind damage, as well as a few tornadoes across south central Mississippi.

An EF-1 tornado touched down just east of MS Highway 42, tracked east, and dissipated in Covington County near MS Highway 589. Trees were damaged along Hosey Mikell, Ridgeland, Stubbs, and Willie Buckley roads. A notable increase in intensity was seen as the tornado approached and crossed Gum Swamp Road around Fairman Lane. Hundreds of trees were snapped and uprooted in the area. Some minor damage was done to a few structures on the east side of Gum Swamp Road. The tornado continued east into Covington County at Sumrall Road where additional trees were uprooted. The tornado continued northeast and ended along MS Highway 589 where it uprooted a tree and snapped some large branches. The maximum wind speed in this tornado was 105 mph.

An EF-1 tornado began just west of Okatoma Creek, uprooting several trees. The tornado continued northeast and ended just east of Old Highway 49, uprooting a few more trees. The maximum wind speed of this tornado was 90 mph.

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

23 minutes of warning. NWS JAN issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:47 UTC, 23 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:31 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:57 UTC and running to 02:44 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, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:54 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 Jackson/Brandon,MS radar (KDGX), 100 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:09 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 2026 tornado in MississippiEvery tornado in Mississippi since 1950Warnings in force in Mississippi nowThe forecast where you are

56 more have been surveyed in the United States that day, so far.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. A survey can be revised, so the rating, the path and the casualties can all still change.

NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, the record the survey teams file from the damage, and NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports. Neither is the official database for 2026, which SPC publishes in the spring of 2027.