Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 2009
EF0 tornado, Dougherty, Texas, May 24, 2009
This EF0 tornado ran 0.3 miles across Floyd County on May 24, 2009, touching down at 5:58 PM CDT and reaching 75 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
- May 24, 2009
- Touchdown
- 5:58 PM CDT (22:58 UTC)
- Lifted
- 6:03 PM CDT (23:03 UTC)
- On the ground
- 5 minutes
- Path length
- 0.3 miles (0.4 km)
- Path width
- 75 yards (69 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Floyd County
- Touchdown point
- 34.053, -101.080
- Lift-off point
- 34.053, -101.076
- Record number
- 0905241658-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Scattered thunderstorms developed over the South Plains region of west Texas during the afternoon hours of the 24th. Storm evolution was driven by small scale outflow boundaries. At least two storms had sufficient updrafts to stretch low level circulations along these boundaries to result in non-mesocyclonic tornadoes. No damage was reported.
The broadcast media relayed photographs of a tornado in extreme eastern Floyd County around 17:00 CST on the 24th. Radar observations suggest that the tornado occurred beneath newly developed convection along two colliding outflow boundaries north of U.S. Highway 62/70. The tornado and its parent thunderstorm visually appeared to be more organized than the earlier event in Hale County and may have grown upscale to obtain a weak mesocyclone. Hints of broad shear are evident in Doppler radar analysis. Local officials received no reports of damage in the mostly rural area near the Floyd and Motley County line.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.
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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:42 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), 12:00Z
11.0 hours before the tornado, 143 km from the path. May 24, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 224 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -45 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 828 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 5 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 7 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 30 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 29 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.5 K/km
Amarillo Airport, TX (KAMA), 00:00Z
1.0 hours after it, 143 km from the path. May 25, 2009.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -81406 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 295 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1658 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 10 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 7 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 32 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 52 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.8 K/km
The surface observations
Plainview (PVW), 60 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21:05 UTC | 60.4 | 57.2 | 120° 4 kt | 1015.2 | RA | |
| 21:25 UTC | 61.2 | 57 | 150° 7 kt | 1014.9 | -RA | |
| 21:45 UTC | 61.2 | 57.7 | 160° 5 kt | 1014.2 | -RA | |
| 22:05 UTC | 62.6 | 58 | 140° 5 kt | 1013.9 | ||
| 22:25 UTC | 62.6 | 56.8 | 0° 0 kt | 1013.5 | ||
| 22:45 UTC | 63 | 57 | 0° 0 kt | 1013.2 | ||
| 23:05 UTC | 64 | 57.4 | 110° 3 kt | 1013.2 | ||
| 23:45 UTC | 67.5 | 60.4 | 90° 6 kt | 1013.2 | ||
| 00:05 UTC | 70 | 60.6 | 100° 5 kt | 1013.2 | ||
| 00:25 UTC | 70 | 58.6 | 90° 9 kt | 1013.2 | ||
| 00:45 UTC | 70 | 61.5 | 100° 7 kt | 1013.9 |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Lubbock radar (KLBB), 81 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:57 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.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2009 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of May 24, 2009
7 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 24 | 2:15 PM EDT | EF1 | Aroostook, ME | 2.7 | 200 | |||
| May 24 | 12:30 PM MDT | EF0 | Beaver, UT | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| May 24 | 2:28 PM CDT | EF0 | Hale, TX | 0.2 | 25 | |||
| May 24 | 2:12 PM MDT | EF0 | Adams, CO | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| May 24 | 3:42 PM MDT | EF0 | Douglas, CO | 0.0 | 50 | |||
| May 24 | 4:45 PM CDT | EF1 | Jim Wells, TX | 0.2 | 50 | $50,000 | ||
| May 24 | 5:25 PM CDT | EF0 | Dyer, TN to MO | 5.2 | 25 |
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.