EF0 tornado, Roy, New Mexico, May 8, 2017

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 8, 2017

Touchdown

6:17 PM MDT (00:17 UTC)

Lifted

6:20 PM MDT (00:20 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Harding County

Touchdown point

36.030, -104.150

Lift-off point

36.033, -104.149

Record number

1705081817-01

A potent upper level low pressure system over Arizona continued inching closer to New Mexico through the 8th. Strong upper level forcing spreading over the region along with high temperatures in the 90s led to abundant instability across eastern New Mexico. Discrete thunderstorms began developing over the eastern plains shortly after 3 pm then spread north across the area. These storms merged into a large, linear cluster stretching from the Fort Sumner area northward across Interstate 40 into Harding County. Several reports of ping pong ball size hail were received from the Fort Sumner area. This area of storms then spawned the first tornado of the 2017 severe weather season to the north of Roy just after 6 pm. The second cluster of thunderstorms developed over Chaves County and produced another round of large hail. Golf ball size hail on the west side of Roswell just after 8 pm. Several rounds of heavy rainfall that trained over the same area of southeastern Guadalupe and northeastern De Baca counties generated torrential rainfall amounts within the Alamogordo Creek drainage. Video of flash flooding was captured along the creek near U.S. Highway 84 north of Fort Sumner.

Brief tornado touchdown six miles north-northeast of Roy.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 22:06 UTC and running to 05:00 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. The outlook in force was issued at 19:55 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 Cannon AFB radar (KFDX), 163 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:17 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 2017 tornado in New MexicoEvery tornado in New Mexico since 1950Warnings in force in New Mexico 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.