EF0 tornado, Lufkin to Homer, Texas, May 3, 2017

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

May 3, 2017

Touchdown

5:31 PM CDT (22:31 UTC)

Lifted

5:37 PM CDT (22:37 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

5.7 miles (9.2 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Angelina County

Touchdown point

31.332, -94.716

Lift-off point

31.297, -94.628

Record number

1705031631-01

17 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 93 mph.

• Large trees down on power lines...

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

A warm front had begun to lift north across Deep East Texas and Southwest Louisiana during the early morning hours of May 3rd, in response to a developing area of surface low pressure over Westcentral Texas along a cold front that extended northeast into Central Oklahoma. This cold front was out ahead of a positively tilted upper trough, as it progressed southeast into Oklahoma during the afternoon. Meanwhile, a shortwave trough ejecting northeast over Southeast Texas and Central Louisiana ahead of the main upper trough during the morning contributed to scattered to numerous shower and thunderstorm development over Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana prior to daybreak on the 3rd, which advanced northeast into Deep East Texas and Central/Southern Louisiana shortly there-afterwards. Additional showers and thunderstorms quickly developed over Southeast Oklahoma and Southwest Arkansas along and just ahead of the front and associated upper trough around/shortly after daybreak. Given the adequate shear and steep lapse rates aloft ahead of the main upper trough, some of the storms over Southeast Oklahoma became severe, producing large hail during the morning. Isolated severe thunderstorms also developed farther south across East Texas and Western Louisiana, with large hail initially the main threat. However, as the air mass destabilized with additional diurnal heating ahead of the front, more numerous strong to severe thunderstorms developed by afternoon as large scale forcing increased ahead of the approaching upper trough, interacting with the warm front over East Texas/Western Louisiana, as well as a mesoscale boundary left behind over portions of the Sam Rayburn Country across Central Louisiana from the morning storms. Large hail and damaging winds were common with these storms during the afternoon and early evening, before the storms exited the region by mid-evening. Isolated areas of flash flooding was also observed across portions of Southwest Arkansas and East Texas, where storms produced very heavy rainfall and briefly moved repeatedly over the same areas.

An EF0 tornado first touched down at the intersection of Church Street and Grant Avenue and began to move east southeast through southeast Lufkin. During this stretch, several large trees were uprooted , knocking over power poles and taking down power lines. A few of these trees fell directly on to homes. The tornado crossed the 287 loop between Highway 69 and CR 841. Several large trees were uprooted and numerous large branches were broken off as it paralleled Fannie Carrell Road as it continued southeast, eventually crossing CR 841 near Fish Road. The tornado lifted near the intersection of Flen Gary Road and CR 326 but not before knocking over several more large trees there, with one on a home.

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.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 22:07 UTC and running to 02:04 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 19:49 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.

Lufkin/Angelina Co. (LFK), 12 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 149 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:30 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

1 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.