EF0 tornado, Garden Vly, Texas, April 20, 2014

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

April 20, 2014

Touchdown

5:30 PM CDT (22:30 UTC)

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Childress County

Touchdown point

34.510, -100.070

Lift-off point

34.510, -100.070

Record number

1404201630-01

Scattered thunderstorms ignited early on the afternoon of the 20th across the southern Texas Panhandle as a slow-moving upper trough encountered moderate instability east of a weak dryline. The most intense thunderstorms, including a few supercells, developed in Hall and Childress Counties. These supercells produced several reports of large hail, some up to baseball size in the city of Childress where numerous vehicles and buildings suffered various degrees of damage. One of these supercells produced a very brief and small tornado east of Childress over open land. Additionally, these slow-moving storms dropped torrential rain that at one point was measured as great as 6 inches per hour by a Texas Tech University West Texas mesonet station. Minor flooding was common in and around Childress where up to 3.25 inches of rain fell. By early evening, additional supercells developed south into the Rolling Plains near Paducah and Guthrie, but reports of severe weather were unavailable in these remote areas.

Storm chasers observed a brief tornado over open land.

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.

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. The outlook in force was issued at 19:53 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 Altus AFB radar (KFDR), 102 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:28 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 2014 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.