EF1 tornado, Spring Hill to Beaverdams, Texas, May 9, 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 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

May 9, 2016

Touchdown

9:06 PM CDT (02:06 UTC)

Lifted

9:07 PM CDT (02:07 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

120 yards (110 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Bowie County

Touchdown point

33.641, -94.615

Lift-off point

33.643, -94.615

Record number

1605092006-01

30 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

• several trees down is slightly different angles.
• tree topped in the distance.
• tree topped and another uprooted in the distance.
• several trees snapped in a row.

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

A volatile atmosphere was in place across the Southern Plains during the afternoon and evening hours of Monday, May 9th. Instability became moderate to high ahead of an upper level disturbance that moved out of the Intermountain West and into the Plains. Deep layer shear was significant enough that storm mode was supercells which developed along a pre-frontal trough axis across portions of Central Oklahoma and North Central Texas. Low level shear was significant enough such that once these storms became supercells, they produced tornadoes...some extreme with long tracks across portions of Oklahoma. These storms propagated eastward through the evening and moved into McCurtain County, Oklahoma and the adjacent counties in Northeast Texas, as well as portions of Southwest Arkansas. By the time the storms moved into these areas, they mostly produced straight line wind damage but a couple short lived tornadoes did develop across the region as well as some large hail. The damage was extreme, consisting of numerous trees snapped and/or uprooted with some of these having fallen on homes and automobiles. There was also some wind damage to structures as well. Some flash flooding was also reported over Northeast Texas where storms trained across the same general area.

An EF-1 tornado with estimated winds between 85-95 mph touched down along Farm to Market Road 2735 just east of Highway 259 before lifting along County Road 3313. Although the primary damage was snapped and uprooted trees, one home had minor siding loss and one outbuilding was damaged.

An EF-1 tornado with estimated winds between 85-95 mph touched down along County Road 3303, snapping and uprooting several trees.

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

14 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:52 UTC, 14 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:25 UTC and running to 07:00 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:44 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.

Idabel (4O4), 37 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 151 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:04 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

27 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.