EF2 tornado, Dryden, Texas, April 29, 2009

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

April 29, 2009

Touchdown

5:00 PM CDT (22:00 UTC)

Lifted

5:04 PM CDT (22:04 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Terrell County

Touchdown point

30.443, -102.052

Lift-off point

30.440, -102.049

Record number

0904291600-01

During the afternoon of April 29, 2009, a surface low developed near Raton Mesa with a dryline extending from the eastern NM/TX border to the Davis Mountains of west Texas. Strong daytime heating resulted in mixed layer CAPE values near 3000 j/kg. As a strong southern stream mid-level jet max approached, favored kinematic profiles lead to the rapid development of supercells across southwest Texas. Although coverage remained fairly isolated due to weak upper level support, upslope/backed flow did result in at least one tornado being observed.

Although a tornado was never reported during the time of issuance, later public reports and a NWS Storm Survey indicated in fact there was a tornado. Based on radar estimates, tornadic damage began sometime around 4 PM CST about 28 miles north of Dryden, TX. This is where a 30 gallon fiberglass tank was destroyed, in addition to another chemical tank. Pieces of the fiberglass tank were found downwind. A set of metal stairs that appeared to have been welded to the tank were also found downwind and were no longer attached to the tank. As the tornado tracked southeastward, its debris field of rocks, gravel and tree limbs stripped the paint off of a recently painted 300 gallon storage tank. The tornado continued on its path and weakened after stripping some cedar trees sometime around 404 PM CST. Please see the attached images for damage photos and a detailed image of the tornado's damage path.

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

39 minutes of warning. NWS MAF issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:21 UTC, 39 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:33 UTC and running to 01:50 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 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 Midland/Odessa radar (KMAF), 168 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:00 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

21 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.