EF0 tornado, Ralls, Texas, April 16, 2009

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 16, 2009

Touchdown

6:45 PM CDT (23:45 UTC)

Lifted

6:46 PM CDT (23:46 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Crosby County

Touchdown point

33.660, -101.405

Lift-off point

33.665, -101.398

Record number

0904161745-01

A severe weather outbreak occurred over west Texas during the afternoon and evening hours of the 16th and resulted in significant public impacts. Despite the occurrence of thirteen tornadoes across the South Plains region, most of the damage resulted from destructive hail and heavy rainfall. ||Thunderstorms first developed over the northern South Plains around 13:00 CST. These early afternoon storms initiated as supercells, but transitioned into a small-scale convective complex that produced extensive amounts of large hail and heavy rainfall. As the storms trained over the Interstate 27 corridor in Swisher County, a significant hail accumulation and flood event resulted in some 50 vehicles becoming stalled and a prolonged closure of the highway through the overnight hours.||Additional storms developed during the mid to late afternoon hours over the central South Plains. Two supercell thunderstorms impacted Lubbock County. One of these storms produced a destructive hail swath through the city of Lubbock damaging some 3,000 homes and more than 1,100 vehicles totaling an estimated $40 million in damages. Meanwhile a second supercell storm over eastern Lubbock County produced a family of weak tornadoes along U.S. Highway 82 east of Idalou. ||Other supercell storms impacted portions of Garza and Kent Counties during the late afternoon and early evening hours. These storms additionally produced damaging hail and brief tornadoes.||By late evening, storm modes transitioned toward broken convective complexes and multicell structures. An unstable low-level environment, however, continued to be characterized by an increasingly enhanced veering of the wind fields. Thus, despite a transition toward less discrete storm cells, the threat for tornadoes remained. Multiple small scale low-level circulations developed within the evolving convective complexes, and these circulations proved to be tornadic. An EF-1 tornado damaged five structures and downed power poles as it tracked nearly eight miles across northwestern Lubbock County and southwestern Hale County around 20:00 CST. Two additional EF-1 tornadoes impacted the Abernathy (Hale County) and Roosevelt (Lubbock County) areas through the 21:00 CST hour. Meanwhile, similar tornadic circulations developed within other storm complexes over portions of Dickens, Kent, and King Counties. Multiple reports of tornadoes were received from rural areas around the Spur, Girard, and Guthrie vicinities but no damages resulted.||In all, an estimated $41.3 million in damages and three injuries resulted from severe weather across the South Plains region of west Texas on the 16th.

The supercell thunderstorm that produced a destructive swath of damaging hail over Lubbock (Lubbock County) produced a brief tornado near Ralls as it tracked northeastward over northern Crosby County.||A number of veteran storm chasers observed a brief tornado just southwest of Ralls at 17:45 CST. The tornado appeared as a broad multiple-vortex spin-up of dust, but resulted in no damage as it remained in open fields.

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

45 minutes of warning. NWS LUB issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:00 UTC, 45 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:45 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 19:42 UTC and running to 03:00 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:01 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), 38 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:46 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 2009 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

15 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.