F0 tornado, Mathis, Texas, May 13, 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

May 13, 2004

Touchdown

6:20 PM CDT (23:20 UTC)

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

San Patricio County

Touchdown point

28.070, -97.780

Lift-off point

28.070, -97.780

Record number

1092

Outflow from earlier thunderstorms over southeast Texas interacted with a sea breeze boundary and very moist and unstable atmosphere during the afternoon hours of the 13th. Strong to severe thunderstorms erupted by late afternoon and early evening from Cotulla to George West to Victoria, persisting for several hours and training over several locations producing flooding rainfall. The thunderstorms eventually organized into a line and pushed offshore during the early morning hours of the 14th. Extensive flooding crippled the southern half of Bee county, where radar estimated up to 10 to 12 inches of rainfall may have fallen. Virtually all roads througout the southern half of the Bee county were impassible. Several residents were reported to have been rescued. Below are selected rainfall totals for this event during the afternoon of the 13th and early morning hours of the 14th from ASOS, RAWS, Cooperative Observer and media sites....Victoria Crossroads Area...Station.............................. Amouts (inches)Coleto Creek...................... 2.59Victoria Airport................... 4.50 (3.63 new daily record for the 13th)Victoria Fire Station............ 3.30...Coastal Bend Area...Station.............................. Amouts (inches)Aransas Wildlife Refuge..... 5.89Bishop............................... 2.59Beeville............................. 1.68Corpus Christi Intl Arpt...... 2.78 (2.43 new daily record for the 13th)Kingsville.......................... 2.67N.A.S. Corpus Christi....... 4.29Refugio 2 NW................... 5.15Rockport........................... 4.82Sinton.............................. 3.60Tynan (1 NE)................... 9.35 (unoffical)...Media Reports...Station............................. Amouts (inches)Beeville 4 S...................... 7.20Ingleside On-The-Bay....... 3.80CC Airline & McArdle...... 5.10

Law enforcement relayed tornado on ground near Highway 188 and Interstate 37. Tornado was briefly on ground over open country and produced no damage.

Spotter reported brief tornado over open county. No damage resulted.

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.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:02 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 Corpus Christi radar (KCRP), 41 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:20 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.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2004 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

9 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.