EF3 tornado, Arnett, Oklahoma, May 18, 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF3

Date

May 18, 2025

Touchdown

5:41 PM CDT (22:41 UTC)

Lifted

5:56 PM CDT (22:56 UTC)

On the ground

15 minutes

Path length

6.0 miles (9.7 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Ellis County

Touchdown point

36.090, -99.865

Lift-off point

36.136, -99.789

Record number

2505181641-01

53 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OUN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 143 mph.

• Very large tree with expansive and healthy root system
• Numerous live hardwoods shredded with few limbs remaining. Piles of limbs collected in barbed wire fence across the road.
• Half of tree tossed across the street? Unclear if the stump and 1/2 tree are the same or not. Half tree did not originate where it is now.
• Ground scouring evident from road. Crops scoured to bare soil.

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

A deep upper-level trough continued to progress eastward across the Central and Southern Plains on the 18th, promoting another round of intense severe weather across the northwestern portion of the WFO Norman Forecast Area. During the early evening, a strong dryline served as the focus for thunderstorm initiation across the aforementioned area. A pair of intense supercell thunderstorms developed here, each producing large to very large hail, with multiple reports of hailstones ranging from four to five inches in diameter. In addition to very large hail, one of the supercells generated a tornado family consisting of four separate tornadoes across Ellis County. Among these was an intense EF3 tornado that impacted areas just southwest of Arnett, OK, causing significant damage along its path.

This tornado began near the intersection of E0630 Road and N1760 Road, breaking four power poles and damaging trees. It moved east-northeast along E0630 Road with extensive tree damage noted just east of N1770 Road. The tornado then turned more northeast and moved over open country. For much of the path, there were few if any damage indicators, but drone imagery from surveys by the National Severe Storms Laboratory and Disaster Imaging Inc, as well as visual sightings of the tornado confirms that this tornado was continuous along this 5 mile path. Additional tree damage was noted along E0620 Road as the tornado continued moving northeast, with the most severe damage along N1810 road about one-half mile south of E0610 Road where trees were partially debarked and only stubs of large limbs were left. The tornado was rated EF3 based on this severe tree damage. Near the end of the track, the tornado appeared to be at its most intense as it turned north with more extensive tree damage along E0610 Road on the western edge of the city of Arnett. A large shipping container was also displaced 175 feet at this location. This tornado turned northwest and dissipated just west of Arnett near US Highway 60.||Researchers with the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the University of Oklahoma, and the OTUS (Observation of Tornadoes by UAS Systems) Project collected detailed datasets during the tornado as well as performing detailed damage surveys.

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

32 minutes of warning. NWS OUN issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:09 UTC, 32 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:39 UTC and running to 02:03 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:05 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 Vance AFB radar (KVNX), 167 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:40 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 2025 tornado in OklahomaEvery tornado in Oklahoma since 1950Warnings in force in Oklahoma nowThe forecast where you are

42 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.