Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 2010
EF0 tornado, Kingsville Arpt, Texas, July 1, 2010
This EF0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Kleberg County on July 1, 2010, touching down at 6:10 PM CDT and reaching 25 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
- July 1, 2010
- Touchdown
- 6:10 PM CDT (23:10 UTC)
- Lifted
- 6:11 PM CDT (23:11 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.1 km)
- Path width
- 25 yards (23 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Kleberg County
- Touchdown point
- 27.629, -98.048
- Lift-off point
- 27.629, -98.050
- Record number
- 1007011710-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Hurricane Alex made its final landfall at 9pm, Wednesday June 30th, along the northern Mexican coast around 110 miles south of Brownsville as a Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph. Alex was the first Hurricane in June for the Altantic Basin since 1995, and the strongest in the month of June since Hurricane Alma in 1966. Alex was a very large hurricane with tropical storm force winds extending over 200 miles from the center. Although Alex passed over 200 miles south of Corpus Christi, tropical storm force wind gusts were measured as far north as Port O'Connor, George West, and Cotulla. The strongest winds were observed on the barrier island from Port Aransas to Baffin Bay where peak wind gusts exceeded 60 mph.||Overall, the impacts to the Middle Texas coast were minimal. Storm tides peaked just below 4 feet mean sea level at tide stations along the coast producing flooding along area beaches. About a half dozen tornadoes occurred within the outer rain bands from Alex. These tornadoes caused mostly minor tree damage. Radar indicated the possibility of several more tornadoes, however NWS survey teams were unable to locate any additional damage. Heavy rainfall and flooding proved to be the biggest impact. Rainfall totals of 3 to 6 inches with isolated amounts near 10 inches were observed across South Texas. This resulted in flooding of many roads and farm fields from Alice to Sinton.||Less than $10 thousand in damages occurred from the 6 tornadoes. However, nearly $5.5 million in damages resulted from flooding associated with the heavy rainfall, of which $5.25 million was observed in Webb County from flooding along the Rio Grande. Nearly $1 million in crop damage, mostly to grain and sorghum was observed. In addition, flooding resulted in two fatalities.
Tornado reported on ground over open country 9 miles NW of Kingsville by a spotter. Location is an estimate. This tornado occurred in the outer rainbands of Hurricane Alex.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
16 minutes of warning. NWS CRP issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:54 UTC, 16 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 12:20 UTC and running to 01:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 05:53 UTC | 07:45 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CRP |
| 07:42 UTC | 09:35 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CRP |
| 09:56 UTC | 15:19 UTC | Coastal Flood Warning | CRP |
| 12:20 UTC | 01:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | CRP |
| 15:19 UTC | 06:00 UTC | Coastal Flood Advisory | CRP |
| 20:58 UTC | 00:00 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CRP |
| 22:33 UTC | 00:30 UTC | Flood Advisory | CRP |
| 22:54 UTC | 23:30 UTC | Tornado Warning | CRP |
| 23:11 UTC | 01:15 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | CRP |
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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:55 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.
Corpus Christi, TX (KCRP), 12:00Z
11.2 hours before the tornado, 71 km from the path. July 1, 2010.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 3628 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- 0 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 3798 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 483 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 27 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 21 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 140 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 172 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.1 K/km
Corpus Christi, TX (KCRP), 00:00Z
0.8 hours after it, 71 km from the path. July 2, 2010.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 2545 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- 0 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 4034 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 455 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 13 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 16 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 89 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 90 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.3 K/km
The radar
The Corpus Christi radar (KCRP), 56 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:10 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20:36 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 1 Nnw Falfurrias | Brooks, TX | FUNNEL CLOUD HALFWAY TO GROUND REPORTED TO THE NNW OF FALFURRIAS. |
| 23:10 UTC | TORNADO | 9 Nw Kingsville | Kleberg, TX | A TORNADO WAS REPORTED BY A SKYWARN SPOTTER 9 MILES NW OF KINGSVILLE. |
| 23:34 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 1 N Ben Bolt | Jim Wells, TX | STORM CHASER REPORTED A FUNNEL CLOUD JUST NORTH OF BEN BOLT. |
| 23:40 UTC | FLOOD | 8 Ssw Alice | Jim Wells, TX | COUNTY ROAD NEAR HOUSE IS FLOODED. CARS MAKING IT THROUGH VERY SLOWLY. CREEK 200 YRDS WEST OF OBSERVER OVERFLOWING BANK WHICH HAS FLOODED THE ADJACENT FIELD. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2010 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of July 1, 2010
1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 1 | 9:20 AM CDT | EF0 | Aransas, TX | 0.0 | 25 | $5,000 |
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.