EF1 tornado, Wilkins to East Mtn, Texas, May 11, 2017

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 11, 2017

Touchdown

6:09 PM CDT (23:09 UTC)

Lifted

6:11 PM CDT (23:11 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.3 miles (2.1 km)

Path width

175 yards (160 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$60,000

County

Upshur County

Touchdown point

32.553, -95.006

Lift-off point

32.565, -94.989

Record number

1705111709-01

47 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 110 mph.

• 1 tree snapped, facing NNE.
• The closest tree was thrown about 25 yards across the street.
• Tops of hardwoods snapped about 200 yards to the west.
• large branches down to the north as well.

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

Showers and thunderstorms developed over Eastcentral Texas and Southeast Oklahoma during the afternoon hours of May 11th, ahead of a positive tilt upper trough that shifted east across Northern Oklahoma and Southern Kansas. The dryline managed to mix east to near the I-35 corridor by late afternoon, before a cold front associated with the upper trough overtook the dryline and shifted southeast into Southeast Oklahoma an extreme Northeast Texas late. The air mass ahead of the front became moderately unstable by mid to late afternoon, with upper forcing ahead of the trough contributing to an increase in strong to severe thunderstorms across much of East Texas and North Louisiana. Damaging winds and hail were common with the stronger storms, with even isolated tornadoes also spawned across portions of East Texas and Northern Caddo Parish in Northwest Louisiana. These storms weakened by late evening with the loss of instability.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum estimated winds between 90-95 mph touched down across a wooded area in a pastureland just west of Juniper Road near the Sabine River south of Highway 80, just west of the Gladewater city limits in far Southern Upshur County. Through the path length, this tornado remained around treetop level, shearing the tops off of numerous trees while also snapping and uprooting trees, where trees had fallen on a mobile home, a motor home, and a pickup truck on Juniper Road. The tornado traveled northeast across Highway 80 to near Locust Road and Green Road where additional trees were partially snapped or uprooted. A few shingles were also blown off of the back of a home on Green Road. The tornado lifted on White Oak Road about one-quarter mile southeast of Locust Road. It should be noted that the parent supercell thunderstorm produced damaging straight-line winds that also uprooted a tree on West Gay Avenue and downed a tree on power lines on West Sheppard Drive in North Gladewater, while also snapping large limbs on Lake Drive and Philips Springs Road just east of Lake Gladewater.

An EF-0 tornado with maximum estimated winds of 65-75 mph touched down along North White Oak Road on the edge of the Union Grove incorporated limits and crossed Seagull Road before entering Northern Gregg County. The tornado intensified into an EF-1 tornado shortly after it crossed over into Gregg County across Morgan Road west of East Mountain Road. Several large tree limbs were snapped from the tops of trees along North White Oak Road, Seagull Road, and Morgan Road.

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

43 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:26 UTC, 43 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 19:46 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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 Shreveport radar (KSHV), 109 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:07 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 2017 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

10 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.