EF0 tornado, Port Isabel, Texas, May 18, 2010

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

May 18, 2010

Touchdown

8:41 AM CDT (13:41 UTC)

Lifted

8:45 AM CDT (13:45 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cameron County

Touchdown point

26.070, -97.220

Lift-off point

26.070, -97.220

Record number

1005180741-01

The combination of upper level energy, overnight remains of outflow boundaries from storms near the Lower Rio Grande River, and the approach of thunderstorms from south Texas toward the Rio Grande Highlands along with a very unstable atmosphere helped intensified these storms into a mesoscale convective system which raced through the Rio Grande Valley between 8 AM and 1045 AM CDT (7 AM and 945 AM CST). The storms produced urban and flash flooding, minor wind damage, pockets of large hail, and frequent cloud to ground lightning. An earlier cluster of storms east of the Port Isabel/Laguna Vista produced a brief landspout tornado.

An off duty Central Region National Weather Service Employee reported a waterspout that briefly moved onshore near Port Isabel. No damage was reported.

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

4 minutes of warning. NWS BRO issued a tornado warning for this county at 13:37 UTC, 4 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 13:54 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 11:11 UTC and running to 16:15 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 12:58 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 Brownsville radar (KBRO), 26 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 13:39 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 2010 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

26 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.