EF2 tornado, Lakeview to Plaska, Texas, May 22, 2016

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

May 22, 2016

Touchdown

6:44 PM CDT (23:44 UTC)

Lifted

6:59 PM CDT (23:59 UTC)

On the ground

15 minutes

Path length

6.6 miles (10.6 km)

Path width

600 yards (549 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Hall County

Touchdown point

34.660, -100.700

Lift-off point

34.630, -100.590

Record number

1605221744-02

The first in a multi-day event produced widespread large hail, tornadoes, and flash flooding but the largest impacts were felt in the extreme southeastern Texas Panhandle. An upper level jet streak provided the necessary lift acting upon a very unstable and strongly sheared atmosphere. Supercell thunderstorms began as isolated cells on the caprock and became more widespread once they moved off the caprock. Initially, storms produced very large hail and damaging winds but an extremely moist atmosphere and slow movement to the storms brought on flash flooding. The most damaging impacts came in Hall County where a nearly stationary storm dropped up to eight inches of rain. The extreme runoff from the storms inundated normally dry washes and creek beds. The floods damaged or destroyed several bridges and roadways and also lead to high water rescues in Lakeview (Hall County).

A large tornado developed near Plaska late this afternoon and moved slowly southeastward for the next 15 minutes before dissipating. Several storm chasers documented this tornado as it grew into a wedge shape while wrapping in rain curtains. This tornado and damaging RFD winds toppled several utility poles, heavily damaged and stripped some trees, and destroyed a barn. The damage was found to be consistent with EF-2 winds. There may have been additional, smaller tornadoes concurrently or following this large tornado, however insufficient video evidence and few damage indicators precluded an explicit entry of these tornadoes.

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

21 minutes of warning. NWS LUB issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:23 UTC, 21 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:48 UTC and running to 05:00 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:36 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), 117 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:42 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 2016 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

25 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.