EF1 tornado, Spring Hill to Easton, Texas, May 28, 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 28, 2017

Touchdown

4:53 PM CDT (21:53 UTC)

Lifted

5:03 PM CDT (22:03 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

10.3 miles (16.5 km)

Path width

800 yards (732 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$750,000

County

Gregg County

Touchdown point

32.550, -94.820

Lift-off point

32.430, -94.716

Record number

1705281553-01

88 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 107 mph.

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

Overnight showers and thunderstorms which held together into the morning hours of Sunday May 28th, moved into Northern Louisiana from the northwest during the morning hours after daybreak. These storms mostly dissipated by midday, leaving numerous outflow boundaries across the area. Meanwhile, a warm front moving northward into the area resulted in dew points quickly rising from the mid 60s to the mid 70s with its passage. This front stalled out near the Interstate 30 corridor of Northeast Texas, and south of this boundary, scattered thunderstorms quickly developed by mid-afternoon and spread east across East Texas near and south of the Interstate 20 corridor. These storms rapidly intensified during peak afternoon heating and instability, and produced numerous reports of wind damage across extreme Eastern Texas and even two short EF-1 tornadoes near and east of Longview. Training storms moving west to east also producing brief flash flooding at some locations. In the storms' wake, over 103,000 customers were left without power across East Texas and Western Louisiana in the AEP SWEPCO coverage area, which was the 4th worst storm (with outages) in the company's 105 year history.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum estimated winds near 105 mph touched down along Pine Tree Road just north of West Cheryl Street northwest of Longview. The tornado proceeded south southeast through the Tenneryville area snapping and uprooting numerous trees in the area. The tornado traveled just west of the Pine Tree ISD campus and continued southeast towards Highway 80, uprooting and twisting numerous trees, with several landing on homes. The tornado continued southeast towards the Greggton community where it damaged a few homes along Willow Springs Drive before crossing Highway 31 and the West Loop 281 where it began to turn more to the east southeast. The tornado caused the most visible damage along its path where it collapsed a steel dome owned by Komatsu, before continuing to the southeast causing mainly tree damage before lifting along Huntsman Way south of Interstate 20 just west of the Eastman Chemical Company.

A weak EF-1 tornado with maximum estimated winds near 90 mph touched down 2 miles west of the Easton community along Highway 2906 where it uprooted several trees. This tornado continued east along Highway 2906 where several more trees were snapped or uprooted with the most noticeable damage found in the city of Easton along the Gregg/Rusk County line. Several trees were uprooted and fell on homes in Easton, before moving across the city on the Rusk County side.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:54 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.

Longview/Gregg Co. (GGG), 13 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 87 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:54 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

4 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.