Tornadoes · United States · Texas · 2015
EF0 tornado, Telferner, Texas, May 13, 2015
This EF0 tornado ran 0.0 miles across Victoria County on May 13, 2015, touching down at 4:01 PM CDT and reaching 10 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF0
- Date
- May 13, 2015
- Touchdown
- 4:01 PM CDT (21:01 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.0 miles (0.0 km)
- Path width
- 10 yards (9 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Victoria County
- Touchdown point
- 28.802, -96.844
- Lift-off point
- 28.802, -96.844
- Record number
- 1505131501-01
What the Weather Service recorded
A stalled front along with abundant moisture and an upper level disturbance produced heavy rainfall across many areas of the Coastal Bend on May 13th, 2015. Average rain amounts of 3 to 4 inches fell with isolated amounts between 6 to 8 inches during the morning of the 13th on the south side of Corpus Christi including Flour Bluff, North Padre Island, and Mustang Island. This rainfall came on the heels of another heavy rain event, that occurred in the previous two days. ||Many streets and subdivisions in Corpus Christi were flooded. Some roads were even closed for a portion of the day. Many Corpus Christi schools delayed classes due to the widespread flooding. Similar conditions occurred in Orange Grove, Agua Dulce, and Freer. ||Several thunderstorms throughout the morning and afternoon hours exhibited signs of rotation. There were several reported funnel clouds across the area. One brief tornado touchdown was reported around 20 miles southwest of Freer in northern Webb County.
Victoria Fire Marshall reported a tornado lasted less than a minute to the southeast of Victoria Regional Airport near Farm to Market Road 1686 and Gin Road.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
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 tornado watch, issued at 14:55 UTC and running to 22:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 08:43 UTC | 22:00 UTC | Flash Flood Watch | CRP |
| 14:55 UTC | 22:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | CRP |
| 21:10 UTC | 21:45 UTC | Tornado Warning | CRP |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Marginal 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 air that afternoon
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.
Corpus Christi, TX (KCRP), 12:00Z
9.0 hours before the tornado, 129 km from the path. May 13, 2015.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 187 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -130 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1139 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 798 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 30 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 12 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 124 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 203 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.3
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.4 K/km
Corpus Christi, TX (KCRP), 00:00Z
3.0 hours after it, 129 km from the path. May 14, 2015.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 626 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -86 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 3222 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1095 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 37 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 11 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 71 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 157 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.1
- Supercell composite
- 1.7
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.3 K/km
The radar
The Corpus Christi radar (KCRP), 131 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:01 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20:24 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 4 Wsw Ganado | Jackson, TX | FUNNEL CLOUD OVER LAKE TEXANA...BETWEEN EDNA AND GANADO. |
| 21:05 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 5 Se Victoria | Victoria, TX | FIRE MARSHALL IN VICTORIA REPORTED BRIEF FUNNEL CLOUD NEAR VICTORIA AIRPORT FM 1686 AND GIN ROAD. BRIEFLY TOUCHED DOWN FOR ABOUT 30 SECONDS THEN WENT BACK UP. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2015 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of May 13, 2015
2 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.