Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 2007
EF0 tornado, Earth, Texas, June 2, 2007
This EF0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Lamb County on June 2, 2007, touching down at 9:14 PM CDT and reaching 100 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
- June 2, 2007
- Touchdown
- 9:14 PM CDT (02:14 UTC)
- Lifted
- 9:15 PM CDT (02:15 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.2 km)
- Path width
- 100 yards (91 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Lamb County
- Touchdown point
- 34.160, -102.365
- Lift-off point
- 34.158, -102.364
- Record number
- 0706022014-01
What the Weather Service recorded
An active round of severe thunderstorms erupted along a series of outflow boundaries over the South Plains of west Texas during the evening hours of the 2nd, and persisted into the early morning hours of the 3rd. Atmospheric wind shear was sufficient to result in scattered supercell storms that produced extremely large hail and at least six tornadoes.||Damage from the storms was generally a result of large hail, which broke windows and dented vehicles in Levelland (Hockley County) and Meadow (Terry County).
Several storm chasers and Skywarn spotters observed a brief tornado east of Farm to Market Road 1055 south of Earth. The tornado remained in open fields and no damage was reported.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
45 minutes of warning. NWS LUB issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:29 UTC, 45 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:15 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01:29 UTC | 02:15 UTC | Tornado Warning | LUB |
| 02:14 UTC | 03:00 UTC | Tornado Warning | LUB |
| 02:57 UTC | 03:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | LUB |
| 03:36 UTC | 08:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | LUB |
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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:06 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.
Amarillo Airport, TX (KAMA), 00:00Z
2.2 hours before the tornado, 134 km from the path. June 3, 2007.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1384 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -32 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 3039 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1663 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 37 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 10 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 54 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 121 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.2
- Supercell composite
- 4.7
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 8.2 K/km
Amarillo Airport, TX (KAMA), 12:00Z
9.8 hours after it, 134 km from the path. June 3, 2007.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -398 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1262 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 35 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 11 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- -45 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 27 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.5 K/km
The radar
The Lubbock radar (KLBB), 76 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:13 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23:58 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | 1 E Easter | Castro, TX | REPORTED BY BROADCAST METEOROLOGIST. |
| 00:05 UTC | HAIL 0.88 | Easter | Castro, TX | KAMR-TV BROADCAST METEOROLOGIST. |
| 00:20 UTC | HAIL 1.75 | 4 S Easter | Castro, TX | ALONG FM 1055. |
| 00:34 UTC | HEAVY RAIN | Dimmitt | Castro, TX | SVR UNTIL 830 PM |
| 00:38 UTC | HAIL 1 | Dimmitt | Castro, TX | HAIL COVERING ROAD ON HWY 2392 . SOME QUARTER SIZED. |
| 00:55 UTC | TORNADO | 9 Ssw Dimmitt | Castro, TX | MULTIPE STORM CHASERS REPORTED A BRIEF TORNADO NORTH-NORTHWEST OF SUNNYSIDE. DUST DEBRIS CLOUD WITH VISIBLE FUNNEL ABOVE. |
| 01:01 UTC | HAIL 1.25 | Dimmitt | Castro, TX | HAL...F DOLLARE SIZED HAIL REPORTED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT ABOUT 801 PM |
| 01:33 UTC | TORNADO | 13 Ssw Dimmitt | Castro, TX | TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN BETWEEN SUNNYSIDE AND EARTH ABOUT 815 AND LIFTED BACK UP ABOUT 830 |
| 01:53 UTC | HAIL 1.75 | 2 N Earth | Lamb, TX | GOLF BALL SIZED HAIL AND LOTS OF ROTATION 2 MILES NORTH OF EARTH |
| 01:56 UTC | HAIL 1.5 | 3 Nw Springlake | Lamb, TX | |
| 02:14 UTC | TORNADO | 4 S Earth | Lamb, TX | TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN ON HWY 1055 AT 914 PM |
| 02:51 UTC | HAIL 1 | 5 Sw Fieldton | Lamb, TX | ONE INCH HAIL |
| 02:55 UTC | HAIL 0.75 | 6 N Littlefield | Lamb, TX | THREE QUARTER INCH HAIL FALLING |
| 03:19 UTC | HAIL 1 | 5 Nw Littlefield | Lamb, TX | 1 INCH HAIL FALLING ON HWY US84 |
| 03:36 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 11 Ene Levelland | Hockley, TX | FUNNEL CLOUD 8 MILES NORTH OF WITHARRAL |
| 04:39 UTC | HAIL 1 | Muleshoe | Bailey, TX | QUARTER SIZED HAIL COVERING GROUND AT WEST CAMP ON HWY 1731 |
| 04:47 UTC | HAIL 1.75 | Muleshoe | Bailey, TX | GOLF BALL SIZED HAIL 2 MILES SOUTH OF WEST CAMP ON HYWS 1760 AND 1731 |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2007 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 2, 2007
10 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2 | 2:19 PM CDT | EF0 | Washington, WI | 0.0 | 15 | |||
| June 2 | 6:35 PM CDT | EF0 | Lyon, MN | 0.5 | 100 | |||
| June 2 | 7:55 PM CDT | EF0 | Castro, TX | 0.2 | 30 | |||
| June 2 | 8:15 PM CDT | EF0 | Castro, TX | 4.0 | 300 | |||
| June 2 | 8:45 PM CDT | EF0 | Hancock, IL | 0.1 | 25 | $5,000 | ||
| June 2 | 10:34 PM CDT | EF0 | Garza, TX | 0.8 | 100 | |||
| June 2 | 10:35 PM CDT | EF0 | Lamb, TX | 1.5 | 100 | |||
| June 2 | 10:40 PM CDT | EF0 | Hockley, TX | 0.8 | 100 | |||
| June 2 | 11:03 PM CDT | EF0 | Hockley, TX | 1.0 | 75 | $15,000 | ||
| June 2 | 12:40 AM CDT | EF0 | Gaines, TX | 1.0 | 50 |
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.