EF0 tornado, Magnolia Beach, Texas, August 25, 2011

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

August 25, 2011

Touchdown

1:25 PM CDT (18:25 UTC)

Lifted

1:26 PM CDT (18:26 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Calhoun County

Touchdown point

28.574, -96.565

Lift-off point

28.574, -96.569

Record number

1108251225-01

On Thursday afternoon, August 25th 2011, portions of the Coastal Bend of South Texas experienced strong to severe thunderstorms. Several clusters of thunderstorms moved southwest across the Coastal Bend and produced winds between 40 and 70 mph. Isolated pockets of wind damage were the result. There was also a brief EF-0 tornado which touched down near Alamo Beach.||An upper level disturbance originating from Northeast Texas and Arkansas the day before had pushed into Southeast Texas by the morning of the 25th. This disturbance then moved southwestward into South Texas during the afternoon of the 25th. Meanwhile, the atmosphere across South Texas became increasingly moist and unstable throughout the afternoon as this disturbance moved into the area.||Damage was fairly minimal throughout the region, although 3,000 customers did lose power during the storms. The storms did bring beneficial rainfall to parts of drought-stricken South Texas.

An NWS survey concluded a short lived tornado touched down near Alamo Beach Street and Lee Street in Alamo Beach. Near this point two homes were observed with small portions of their roofs peeled back. Sheet metal was also torn off the side of one of the homes and a window was broken. A third home near the area was observed to have missing shingles. The tornado continued west to a point near F. M. 2717 between Fannin and East Sunrise Streets. At this point, a poorly constructed mobile home with two floors was observed to have significant damage. The top floor was taken off and deposited to the west-southwest. The bottom floor was partially shifted off the blocks but remained upright. A brick facade on the west side of the home collapsed. Maximum winds were estimated to be around 75 mph with a path length of one quarter of a mile and path width of 100 yards.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:29 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 Corpus Christi radar (KCRP), 128 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:25 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 2011 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

3 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.