EF0 tornado, Mineola Wisener Arpt, Texas, January 29, 2013

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

January 29, 2013

Touchdown

6:15 PM CST (00:15 UTC)

Lifted

6:16 PM CST (00:16 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

325 yards (297 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Wood County

Touchdown point

32.699, -95.550

Lift-off point

32.701, -95.548

Record number

1301291815-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 74 mph.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A very warm and unseasonably moist airmass dominated the Southern Plains into the Lower Mississippi Valley on the 29th of January. Daytime high temperatures were well into the 70s with dewpoint temperatures into the 60s across the entire region. Strong gradient winds were prevalent from the south during the day with wind gusts approaching 40 mph across a few locations. A vigorous upper level storm system dove out of the Central and Southern Plains and moved into the Lower Mississippi Valley during the afternoon and overnight hours of the 29th. A 70 knot low level jet preceded the storm development in a very unstable airmass across the region. In addition, strong low level shear resulted in the development of discreet storms developing ahead of a squall line which produced wide spread wind damage across the region. While no tornadoes were produced across the Four State Region, strong tornadoes developed across portions of Northern Arkansas and extreme Northeast Louisiana with this storm system.

A supercell moved northeast into southwest Wood County and the storm produced an EF0 tornado which touched down briefly about 4 miles northwest of Mineola, Texas along the eastern shore of Lake Holbrook. Damage consisted of a few trees snapped or uprooted near the lake and some tin from boat sheds removed along the shores of the lake.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:41 UTC and running to 04:11 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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.

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 2013 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

20 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.