EF0 tornado, San Benito Muni Arpt, Texas, May 11, 2012

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 11, 2012

Touchdown

3:15 AM CDT (08:15 UTC)

Lifted

3:16 AM CDT (08:16 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$15,000

County

Cameron County

Touchdown point

26.137, -97.617

Lift-off point

26.137, -97.617

Record number

1205110215-01

Vigorous energy cycling around a seasonally strong upper level disturbance crashing into Texas brought a final round of potent thunderstorms through much of the Rio Grande Valley during the late night hours of May 10th into daybreak on May 11th. Initial severe thunderstorms and isolated tornadoes pummeled the Coastal Bend and South Texas Plains from Corpus Christi to near Laredo during the evening of the 10th. As night progressed, pockets of colder air behind the initial line pushed its west end southward; just before midnight, this end would link up with individual cells moving off the Sierra Madre west of Zapata County and form a separate, smaller line from Jim Hogg to Zapata County. This line quickly intensified and dumped heavy rain, high winds some large hail, and one confirmed tornado. As the line marched from the Ranchlands into the Rio Grande Valley, it weakened a bit; as the remnants neared the coast before daybreak, individual small rotating storms developed and redeveloped in Cameron County, with several reports of funnel clouds and at least one confirmed tornado in San Benito (just after 3 AM) from a few hours prior to until just after daybreak on the 11th.||While minor flooding was reported across some of the hilly terrain of the Rio Grande Plains, rainfall was more welcome in the Lower and Mid Valley, with many locations between San Benito, Harlingen, and McAllen receiving 1 to 2 inches of soaking. Frequent to excessive lightning strikes knocked out power to portions of the Rio Grande Valley as the intense storms passed; the lightning caused one structure fire in Pharr.

A mini-supercell thunderstorms dropped a very brief tornado, containing estimated 80 mph winds (high end EF0 on the Fujita Scale) on top of a single family home, causing considerable damage to property at the well built structure. Damage included: four sections of cyclone fence bent in different directions around the home; a boat and trailer flipped over, numerous snapped tree limbs in different directions, and other limbs that came from an undetermined tree, barrel-tile roof shingles lifted off, one broken window, and a damaged carport. Unusual was the singular nature of the damage - striking only this property - with one of the shortest track lengths (a tenth of a mile) one would see on survey.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS BRO issued a tornado warning for this county at 08:14 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 08:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 03:50 UTC and running to 10:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 05:27 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.

Harlingen International Airport (HRL), 11 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Brownsville radar (KBRO), 32 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 08:16 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 2012 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

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.