Tornadoes · United States · Oklahoma · 2025
EF0 tornado, Randlett, Oklahoma, August 28, 2025
This EF0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Cotton County on August 28, 2025, touching down at 4:10 PM CDT and reaching 10 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF0
- Date
- August 28, 2025
- Touchdown
- 4:10 PM CDT (21:10 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.2 km)
- Path width
- 10 yards (9 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Cotton County
- Touchdown point
- 34.160, -98.485
- Lift-off point
- 34.160, -98.485
- Record number
- 2508281510-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Showers and thunderstorms developed in southwest Oklahoma and north Texas on the 28th. A landspout tornado was observed in southwest Oklahoma, but otherwise no severe weather is known to have occurred.
Spotters with Wichita County (TX) Skywarn forwarded photographs taken of a landspout tornado that occurred during the afternoon. One photograph was taken looking northeast from Burkburnett Texas, and another from Cotton County Oklahoma. The specific time and location of this landspout could not determined, but it is believed to have occurred at approximately 4:10 PM CDT to the southwest of Randlett.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:43 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 air that afternoon
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.
Norman, OK (KOUN), 12:00Z
9.2 hours before the tornado, 154 km from the path. August 28, 2025.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 540 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -193 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 849 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 145 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 167 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 1147 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 1186 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 2.5
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.0 K/km
Norman, OK (KOUN), 00:00Z
2.8 hours after it, 154 km from the path. August 29, 2025.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 140 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -210 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 321 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 758 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 23 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 4 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -22 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 219 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- -0.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.1 K/km
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2025 tornado in OklahomaEvery tornado in Oklahoma since 1950Warnings in force in Oklahoma nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of August 28, 2025
1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 28 | 4:25 PM CDT | Unrated | Denton, TX | 0.0 | 20 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.