EF1 tornado, Judson to Harleton, Texas, April 13, 2018

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

April 13, 2018

Touchdown

11:04 PM CDT (04:04 UTC)

Lifted

11:13 PM CDT (04:13 UTC)

On the ground

9 minutes

Path length

4.3 miles (7.0 km)

Path width

580 yards (530 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$11,000

Counties

Gregg and Harrison counties

Touchdown point

32.635, -94.744

Lift-off point

32.670, -94.683

Record number

1804132204-01

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 96 mph.

• several trees uprooted and snapped about 200-300 ft off road.
• about 100-200 ft off road.
• several branches down 200 feet off road.

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

A strong upper level trough of low pressure progressed east across the Southern Plains during the afternoon of April 13th, with a large warm sector of warm/humid air having expanded north across much of the Ark-La-Tex. A capping inversion delayed the onset of thunderstorm development until the late afternoon, where it eroded and large scale forcing increased with shortwave perturbations ahead of the trough and along/just ahead of a dry line as it mixed east to the Interstate 35 corridor or North and Central Texas. Given the moderate instability and strong wind shear that developed with the lead shortwave, scattered supercell thunderstorms developed across East Texas during the late afternoon through the evening hours, producing numerous reports of damaging winds and large hail. While a lull in the storms was observed, a line of severe thunderstorms developed along the dryline south of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, and progressed east into East Texas by late evening. Damaging winds and reports of hail were prevalent at first with this line of severe thunderstorms, but a number of notches developed along the squall line as these storms moved into extreme Eastern Texas, resulting in two tornadoes touching down across Northern Gregg and Northwest Harrison Counties, as well as extreme Southeastern Harrison County near the Caddo Parish Louisiana line. These severe thunderstorms exited East Texas by midnight on the 14th.

An EF-1 tornado, with estimated maximum winds near 90 mph, touched down along Brown Road just east of Highway 259, snapping and uprooting trees as it moved off to the northeast along Lloyd and Northridge Road. One tree landed on a shed on Lloyd Circle. The tornado continued northeast into Northwest Harrison County.

This is a continuation of the EF-1 tornado from Northeast Gregg County. This tornado, with estimated maximum winds near 90 mph, continued northeast along Dunn Bottoms Road, where it snapped and uprooted several more trees, snapped a wooden utility pole, and lifted the roof off of a hay barn. The tornado lifted along Dunn Bottom Road just south of Highway 154.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 02:54 UTC and running to 05:47 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 00:55 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.

Gilmer/Fox_stephens_field (JXI), 23 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 85 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:01 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 2018 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

22 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.