EF0 tornado, Four Way, Texas, September 17, 2016

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

September 17, 2016

Touchdown

9:47 PM CDT (02:47 UTC)

Lifted

9:54 PM CDT (02:54 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (1.9 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Moore County

Touchdown point

35.688, -101.980

Lift-off point

35.693, -101.960

Record number

1609172047-01

11 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS AMA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• Building shifted 6" north.
• small building. mostly collapsed than destroyed maybe?
• shifted north about 6 inches
• building shifted north about 6 inches

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

Two rounds of storms worked their way through the northern and eastern TX Panhandle. The first round was bowed out MCS developed north of a stalled out boundary over the south Plains with an meso-environment of weak CAPE and moderate CIN across the eastern TX panhnadle. Going into the afternoon and evening hours, an upper level low pressure impulse was moving SE out of NM. Out ahead of the trough axis, it was a high CAPE and moderate effective shear environment which indicated super cell convection in-conjunction with daytime heating. Going into the later evening hours, a supercell formed on the base of an eastward progressing line. This storm produced two EF0 tornadoes across Moore County. With the loss of daytime heating, the supercell generate a large cold pool and weakened as it turned left and heading more due east. Both complexes of storms also produce severe wind gusts and large hail.

Rope tornado touched down briefly two times in rapid succession around 0941 PM. The event was witnessed by a trained spotter and deputy and was reported through the assistant Emergency Manager for Moore County.

NWS survey team found 1.2 mile long damage path. Shed destroyed, widespread tree damage and roof damage to a mobile home.

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

8 minutes of warning. NWS AMA issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:39 UTC, 8 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:13 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:24 UTC and running to 04:53 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:43 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.

Dumas (DUX), 19 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Amarillo radar (KAMA), 56 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:48 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

6 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.