Unrated tornado, (Row)Roswell Ind Airport, New Mexico, May 6, 2025

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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 6, 2025

Touchdown

2:05 PM MDT (20:05 UTC)

Lifted

2:20 PM MDT (20:20 UTC)

On the ground

15 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (2.0 km)

Path width

15 yards (14 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Chaves County

Touchdown point

33.225, -104.586

Lift-off point

33.227, -104.564

Record number

2505061405-01

Abundant moisture pushed east to west across NM behind a strong cold front ahead of a strong upper level low approaching from AZ. The abundant moisture and favorable weather setup allowed for multiple days of strong to severe thunderstorms to develop across northern and central NM from May 4th through the 6th. Alongside all of this was unseasonably cold weather at higher elevations of the northern mountains. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains received 1 to 3 feet of snow at higher elevations above 9,500 feet. These high snow amounts ended up melting fairly quickly or succumbed to rain on snow events producing flooding impacts over portions of the east slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that lasted into May 8th.||Key Words: Heavy Snow, Severe Thunderstorms, River Flooding.

A trained spotter reported a landspout northwest of the Roswell Correctional Facility, lasting only a few minutes. Path and length are an estimate based on radar imagery and report information.

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

NWS Albuquerque, NM wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at May 5, 3:30 PM MDT, 22 hours 35 minutes earlier.

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Roswell/Industrial (ROW), 9 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Holloman AFB radar (KHDX), 145 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:07 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2025 tornado in New MexicoEvery tornado in New Mexico since 1950Warnings in force in New Mexico nowThe forecast where you are

10 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.