F0 tornado, Garden City, Texas, March 4, 2004

1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 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. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 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

F0

Date

March 4, 2004

Touchdown

9:30 AM CST (15:30 UTC)

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$40,000

County

Glasscock County

Touchdown point

31.700, -101.420

Lift-off point

31.700, -101.420

Record number

757

A significant severe weather event affected Texas and Oklahoma on the 3rd and 4th of March. Elevated severe thunderstorms first erupted across West Texas and far southeast New Mexico late in the evening on the 3rd. The activity increased in intensity and coverage through the night over the Permian Basin and Trans Pecos regions of Texas as a warm front moved north to the Interstate 20 corridor. Widely scattered supercell storms moved along the boundary over the southeast Permian Basin during the very early morning hours. The convection then evolved into a broken squall line as it began to quickly spread east. Several bookend vortices, line echo wave patterns, and bow segments were observed in the Doppler radar imagery across the eastern Permian Basin. A total of four weak tornadoes were confirmed to be associated with these signatures.

A delayed report from a local farmer indicated that a tornado tracked across his property in southeastern Glasscock County. A shed was destroyed and the rafters of a large barn were broken by the tornadic winds. In addition, four utility poles were snapped. The farmer described a well-defined and narrow path through shredded mesquite trees in his pasture.

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

14 minutes of warning. NWS MAF issued a tornado warning for this county at 15:16 UTC, 14 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 16:00 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 13:09 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.

Big_spring (BPG), 58 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

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 2004 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

24 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.