EF0 tornado, Afton, Texas, December 26, 2018

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

December 26, 2018

Touchdown

3:40 PM CST (21:40 UTC)

Lifted

3:41 PM CST (21:41 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Dickens County

Touchdown point

33.777, -100.779

Lift-off point

33.782, -100.778

Record number

1812261540-01

Following a mild Christmas, unusually moist air streamed north early this morning complete with some thunderstorms. This moisture deepened through the day on very breezy southeast winds all ahead of a mature upper level trough and Pacific cold front. Shortly after noon, a broken line of strong thunderstorms developed along this front across the southwest South Plains and spread swiftly east with predominantly small hail, downpours and strong wind gusts. A few of these embedded storms became severe at times with quarter size hail and high winds. Strong low level wind shear even supported the development of a rare wintertime tornado in northern Dickens County that damaged some structures.

An emergency manager relayed a public report of three heavily damaged silos with minor property damage to other outdoor structures about 2 miles east-northeast of Afton. Since debris was cleaned up by the following morning, a storm survey was not possible. Once NWS personnel talked with the affected property owner who corroborated other reports of a tall funnel cloud around this time, it was deemed that a tornado was responsible for the damage. Despite no radar indication of mesocyclones with most of these non-supercell storms, other funnel clouds (and possible tornadoes) were documented on social media from similar storms later this afternoon. This tornado's event time was estimated from radar.

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 18:48 UTC and running to 22:50 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:58 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.

Childress Municipal (CDS), 86 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Lubbock radar (KLBB), 97 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:42 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

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.