Unrated tornado, Atlantic, Oklahoma, October 10, 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 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

October 10, 2021

Touchdown

10:30 PM CDT (03:30 UTC)

Lifted

10:32 PM CDT (03:32 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Tulsa County

Touchdown point

35.860, -95.852

Lift-off point

35.868, -95.844

Record number

2110102130-01

31 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS TSA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

• Various damage to high school; baseball fences down, hvac blown off several scholl buildings

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

Severe thunderstorms developed across central Oklahoma during the afternoon of the 10th, along a cold front that was moving into the area. These storms moved eastward and across eastern Oklahoma during the evening. In response to a strong upper level disturbance translating into the Southern Plains, wind fields as well as wind shear strengthened considerably during the evening across eastern Oklahoma ahead of the approaching thunderstorms. The very strong wind shear combined with moderately strong instability that existed across the area, resulted in some supercell thunderstorms, as well as the eventual evolution of a squall line. One of the supercells produced a tornado, and the squall line produced several tornadoes as it moved through eastern Oklahoma. Large hail up to two inches in diameter, and damaging wind gusts also occurred from these thunderstorms.

This tornado produced a tornadic debris signature from the KINX WSR-88D. It apparently developed just east of S Garnett Road and south of E 201st Street S, just north of the county line. There were no roads accessing the area where the tornado occurred, thus the NWS survey team wasn't able to review any of the damage that produced the debris signature.

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

25 minutes of warning. NWS TSA issued a tornado warning for this county at 03:05 UTC, 25 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 02:59 UTC and running to 05:23 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:57 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.

Tulsa/Lloyd Jones (RVS), 23 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Tulsa radar (KINX), 43 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:31 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 OklahomaEvery tornado in Oklahoma since 1950Warnings in force in Oklahoma nowThe forecast where you are

18 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.