EF0 tornado, Nogal, New Mexico, May 8, 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 8, 2019

Touchdown

5:45 PM MDT (23:45 UTC)

Lifted

5:48 PM MDT (23:48 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lincoln County

Touchdown point

33.616, -105.741

Lift-off point

33.616, -105.741

Record number

1905081745-01

An unseasonably cold upper level low pressure system drifted east through the desert southwest while a potent back door cold front moved southwest through eastern New Mexico on May 8-10, 2019. Showers and thunderstorms developed over northeastern New Mexico as the cold front moved through the area on May 8, 2019. Locally heavy rainfall, strong wind gusts, and hail impacted areas from near Tucumcari to Clovis. Meanwhile, valley rain and high terrain snow spread east across northern New Mexico with heavy wet snow accumulations above 9,000 feet. One to two inches of snow around Taos was able to bring several large Cottonwood trees down with even some damage to one home. The east slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains were pounded with eight to 16 inches of wet snow. Travel impacts were limited despite heavy snowfall in the high terrain. Temperatures were cold enough on May 10, 2019 to support snowfall along the Interstate 25 corridor from Raton to Las Vegas and Santa Fe where one to two inches of wet snow fell. Folks along the east slopes of the Sandia Mountains also picked up a couple inches of wet snow on grassy and elevated surfaces.

A brief landspout tornado was reported over rural countryside northwest of Nogal.

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.

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 19:56 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 live radar over the trackEvery 2019 tornado in New MexicoEvery tornado in New Mexico since 1950Warnings in force in New Mexico nowThe forecast where you are

17 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.