EF1 tornado, Oak Hill to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, March 2, 2023

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

EF1

Date

March 2, 2023

Touchdown

9:05 PM CST (03:05 UTC)

Lifted

9:11 PM CST (03:11 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

4.8 miles (7.8 km)

Path width

390 yards (357 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

McCurtain County

Touchdown point

34.034, -94.812

Lift-off point

34.068, -94.738

Record number

2303022105-01

31 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• Definite convergent damage pattern here

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

A potent upper-level trough progressed from the Four-Corners Region into the Texas Panhandle by late in the afternoon on March 1st and through March 2nd. Strong warm and moist air advection was ongoing in advance of the trough preceding the event. This resulted in scattered convection, but this had little effect on increasing instability through the afternoon as temperatures warmed into the mid and upper 70s to lower and mid 80s. This environment produced an isolated strong thunderstorm that produced nickel size hail just south of Haworth on the 1st. A potent upper-level trough progressed from the Four-Corners Region into the Texas Panhandle by late in the afternoon on March 2nd. Strong warm and moist air advection was ongoing in advance of the trough earlier in the morning. This resulted in scattered convection, but this had little effect on increasing instability through the afternoon as temperatures warmed into the mid and upper 70s to lower and mid 80s. Additionally, backing surface winds also promoted increasing low-level shear as well as deep-layer shear with a 50-60 knot low-level jet surging east ahead of the trough and advancing cold front. This environment was supportive of several supercells that developed by late afternoon into the early evening hours, producing an isolated tornado in addition to large hail and damaging wind gusts Across McCurtain County Oklahoma. As the cold front surged east of I-35 by early in the evening, the storm mode eventually became more linear with an increasing threat of more widespread damaging winds along the complex of storms while the threat of large hail also continued through the end of the event.

An EF1 tornado embedded within a quasi-linear convective system, or squall line, began west of Broken Bow along Poppy Road and proceeded to advance nearly 5 miles northwest and then north of the city before lifting as it crossed Highway 259. Most the damage was in the form of uprooted trees lying to the north or northeast, but some trees were lying to the northwest. This fact, in combination with signs of convergence in the damage pattern, was enough to give confidence in categorizing this as a tornado. The highest winds estimated in the 90 to 100 mph range, and the maximum width of nearly 400 yards, was in the vicinity of where the tornado crossed Highway 3. A few structures were damaged in this tornado, but mainly due to falling trees.

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 tornado watch, issued at 20:59 UTC and running to 04:50 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 01:00 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 Western Arkansas radar (KSRX), 143 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:05 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 2023 tornado in OklahomaEvery tornado in Oklahoma since 1950Warnings in force in Oklahoma 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.