EF1 tornado, Kings Mill to Pampa, Texas, October 9, 2014

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

October 9, 2014

Touchdown

9:10 PM CDT (02:10 UTC)

Lifted

9:22 PM CDT (02:22 UTC)

On the ground

12 minutes

Path length

7.0 miles (11.3 km)

Path width

125 yards (114 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Gray County

Touchdown point

35.421, -101.044

Lift-off point

35.484, -100.947

Record number

1410092010-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS AMA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 98 mph.

• Multiple round bales of hay were blown about in various directions, including one that damaged a fence and another that was displaced one half mile from its origin.
• Wood utility poles broken.

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

Two stalled baroclinic zones from earlier convection and a cold front laid across the Panhandles in the afternoon hours of the 9th. Up to 1500 J/Kg mlcape developed in the southern Texas Panhandle with lesser amounts further north. Straight long hodographs favored splitting supercells and favorably oriented boundaries gave right movers something to latch onto. One dominate right moving supercell formed in eastern Oldham County and rode an east-west oriented boundary all the way through Wheeler County. This storm exhibited signs of rotation and twice tightened to the point of necessitating tornado warnings. Hail up to tennis ball size hail was reported sporadically throughout the event. Another storm near Dalhart later in the night formed along the other boundary and became supercellular producing a very intense low level couplet and baseball size hail. Storms finally decreased in intensity around midnight.

A supercell thunderstorms produced a weak EF-1 tornado which caused intermittent damage along a 7 mile path from 4.2 miles south of Kingsmill (Gray County) to 3.8 miles south-southeast of Pampa (Gray County). The tornado snapped several wooden utility poles along Farm-to-Market Road 2300 between the intersection of County Roads L and N. This disrupted electrical service to several hundred customers. Damage to these utility poles is indicative of winds between 95 and 100 MPH. ||The tornado continued across mostly open fields toward the northeast, and crossed Texas Highway 70 approximately 3.7 miles south of Pampa (Gray County). Shortly after crossing State Highway 70, the tornado caused damage to three homesteads along Farm-to-Market Road 749. This damage included loss of shingles and partial roof uplift of a manufactured home. A concrete anchored porch was destroyed and metal poles became projectiles that entered the home. A large tree was blown onto the roof of a neighboring home resulting in structural damage. A flag pole was bent from the wind and a small outbuilding was destroyed. As the tornado moved into an adjacent field, several round bales of hay were blown about in various directions. One bale damaged a fence and was displaced upwards of one half mile from its original location. Damage along Farm-to-Market Road 749 south of the intersection of County Road I is indicative of 75 to 85 mph winds and a path width of 125 yards was observed.

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

2 minutes of warning. NWS AMA issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:08 UTC, 2 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:00 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 22:20 UTC and running to 06:00 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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:45 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.

Pampa (PPA), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Amarillo radar (KAMA), 69 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:10 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

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.