EF2 tornado, Mixon, Texas, April 9, 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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

April 9, 2015

Touchdown

6:38 PM CDT (23:38 UTC)

Lifted

6:45 PM CDT (23:45 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

1.8 miles (2.8 km)

Path width

340 yards (311 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$300,000

County

Cherokee County

Touchdown point

32.089, -95.229

Lift-off point

32.094, -95.199

Record number

1504091738-01

25 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 115 mph.

• smaller trees, but fell to the nw.
• saw the tornado form, and ran in the house.

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

A potent upper level storm system ejected into the Central Plains on April 9th. An attendant developing cold front moved southeastward into the region during the late afternoon hours. A warm prefrontal airmass was noted across all of Northeast Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, Southwest Arkansas and Northwest Louisiana during the late afternoon and evening hours which meant that strong instability was present. Deep layer shear was supportive of supercell and multicell thunderstorms. Low level storm relative helicity was also supportive of tornadoes, at least initially across Northeast Texas.

AN EF-2 tornado first touched down 3.5 miles northeast of Mount Selman, Texas near Hwy. 177 and traveled a path length of 1.77 miles before lifting just north of Hwy. 135 or approximately 5.25 miles northeast of Mount Selman, Texas. The tornado uprooted trees along its path. The Mixon Community was hit the hardest with several homes receiving moderate to severe damage in the Gatewood Estates area of Mixon. One home was completely destroyed.

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

8 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:30 UTC, 8 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:10 UTC and running to 03:00 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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.

Jacksonville (JSO), 25 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 135 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:38 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.