EF1 tornado, Lake Brownwood, Texas, April 26, 2015

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

April 26, 2015

Touchdown

10:00 PM CDT (03:00 UTC)

Lifted

10:05 PM CDT (03:05 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

175 yards (160 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Brown County

Touchdown point

31.864, -99.058

Lift-off point

31.864, -99.041

Record number

1504262100-01

30 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SJT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• Debris was thrown to the west-northwest.
• debris thrown to the east-southeast
• Trailer was knocked off block and pushed approximately 15 feet to the west.
• Concrete anchor pulled from the ground.

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

As two potent upper level jet streams converged over West Central Texas on April 26, they interacted with a dryline to result in the rapid development of supercells. These supercells produced large hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes across the area. Later that evening, the supercells congealed into a line of storms or a quasi-linear convective system that may have generated the tornado near Lake Brownwood and the intense winds in Mason. On the 27th, isolated severe storms formed and resulted in a few reports of large hail across Brown and San Saba Counties.

A tornado touched down near the intersection of Park Road 15 and County Road 455. The tornado continued east to Lake Brownwood. The most significant damage was to a well anchored carport in cement that was extracted by the tornado. Widespread damage was reported at Nichols Ranch to farm outbuildings, trees, homes, and boat docks.

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.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 00:59 UTC and running to 04:33 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:00 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 Dyess AFB radar (KDYX), 77 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:58 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 2015 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

18 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.