EF0 tornado, Panhandle, Texas, June 12, 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

June 12, 2018

Touchdown

6:46 PM CDT (23:46 UTC)

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Carson County

Touchdown point

35.340, -101.410

Lift-off point

35.340, -101.410

Record number

1806121746-01

A rather tame upper level pattern with mid and low level key features helped to develop this severe weather event. Weak upper level high center was moving east across southern New Mexico during the day on the 12th. A weak disturbance did set up across the Panhandles the evening of the 12th. In the lower levels, high low level moisture was in place with moderate to strong south to southeasterly surface winds. A surface boundary also set up from southwest to northeast across the Panhandles along with an outflow boundary moving west from western Oklahoma. These boundary set ups provided good shear with the already high instability across the region. As a result in the afternoon hours, slow moving supercells were developing across parts of the central and eastern Texas Panhandles. One storm near Panhandle, TX did produce a brief tornado. More thunderstorms would fire into the evening hours across portions of the western Texas Panhandle as the main boundary moved westward. A second complex of thunderstorms developed across portions of the eastern OK Panhandle in association with a complex of storms developing just to the east of Beaver County, OK. These storms also produced large hail. Starting later in the afternoon and continuing into the evening and early morning hours on the 13th was the flash flooding threat that was ongoing with PWAT values in the atmosphere over one inch and some slow moving thunderstorms where flooding was reported.

Brief landspout on ground a minute or less, reported by multiple chasers in the area.

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 21:41 UTC and running to 07:00 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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.

Amarillo - Rick Husband Intl (AMA), 30 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Amarillo radar (KAMA), 30 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:46 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

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.