EF0 tornado, Slaton to (Lbb)Lubbock Intl Ar, Texas, April 17, 2007

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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 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

EF0

Date

April 17, 2007

Touchdown

1:40 PM CDT (18:40 UTC)

Lifted

1:50 PM CDT (18:50 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

1.3 miles (2.0 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lubbock County

Touchdown point

33.441, -101.682

Lift-off point

33.461, -101.687

Record number

0704171240-01

A potent middle and upper atmospheric storm system moved eastward over the west Texas South Plains on the 17th. This system resulted in the development of numerous thunderstorms across the region. With abundant sunshine and heating that occurred early in the day beneath very cold mid-level temperatures aloft, steep vertical temperature lapse rates developed. With strong instability in place, thunderstorms developed rapidly around midday in the vicinity of a stalled frontal boundary that stretched from northwest to southeast across the region.|Thunderstorm updrafts were enhanced by the cold mid-level temperatures, and this made them efficient for stretching small circulations along the frontal boundary. This process, combined with complex storm interactions and multi-cell storm mergers, resulted in the development of at least six tornadoes across the South Plains region. All of the tornadoes were weak, but some damage did occur in Hale and Lubbock Counties, including within the city of Lubbock. The storms also produced large hail up to the size of ping pong balls.

|A local broadcast media affiliate (KAMC-TV) photographed a tornado spawned by a rapidly developing thunderstorm along an outflow boundary just northwest of Slaton. The tornado was small, but video documentation of the event suggested a very tight low-level circulation with a well-developed dust column that extended upward to a narrow rotating cloud base. The tornado remained over open country, and no damage was reported.

|A brief tornado was observed to cause damage in the west part of Lubbock between 13:00 and 13:03 CST. A local man photographed a condensation funnel extending a short distance out of the parent cloud base. Meanwhile, an automotive business sustained damage as the tornadic circulation broke tree limbs and ripped sheet medal from a few structures near the intersections of U.S. Highway 84 and Quaker Avenue and University and Kent. No injuries were reported.

|A Texas Department of Public Safety officer witnessed a brief tornado as it developed over open fields just south of the intersection of U.S. Highway 62/82 and Farm to Market Road 1729. The tornado resulted in no damage.

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

6 minutes of warning. NWS LUB issued a tornado warning for this county at 18:34 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 19:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:30 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 Lubbock radar (KLBB), 26 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:40 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 2007 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

7 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.