EF0 tornado, Silverton, Texas, May 16, 2015

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

May 16, 2015

Touchdown

1:12 PM CDT (18:12 UTC)

Lifted

1:13 PM CDT (18:13 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Briscoe County

Touchdown point

34.600, -101.240

Lift-off point

34.605, -101.233

Record number

1505161212-01

A very unstable and strongly sheared air mass developed late this morning ahead of a dryline and potent upper trough. Strong and very dry southwest winds of 30 to 40 mph exited New Mexico and focused scattered thunderstorm development along the dryline before noon CST. The most significant of these storms quickly became a supercell and tracked from near Olton northeast to rural areas of northern Briscoe County accompanied by very large hail and one tornado. Additional supercells developed throughout the Rolling Plains and far southeast Texas Panhandle; one of which would later evolve into a prolific tornadic storm in southwest Oklahoma. West of the dryline, widespread blowing dust with poor visibilities occasionally as low as one quarter mile in some rural areas hampered many weekend graduation ceremonies and outdoor events. Visibility at the Lubbock Airport officially fell to three quarters of a mile during the height of the blowing dust with a peak wind measured at 50 mph.

An off-duty fire department volunteer observed a tornado about ten miles north-northeast of Silverton. Video from a motorist showed this tornado lasted for about one minute.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:58 UTC and running to 22:07 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, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:31 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 Amarillo radar (KAMA), 82 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:12 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

47 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.