EF2 tornado, San Augustine Arpt to Fords Corner, Texas, April 24, 2019

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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

April 24, 2019

Touchdown

11:13 PM CDT (04:13 UTC)

Lifted

11:23 PM CDT (04:23 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

8.5 miles (13.7 km)

Path width

1,100 yards (1006 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5.0 million

County

San Augustine County

Touchdown point

31.518, -94.154

Lift-off point

31.563, -94.020

Record number

1904242213-01

46 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 133 mph.

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

A strong closed upper level low pressure system advanced east across Central Texas during the evening hours of April 24th, which helped to mix a warm front north into portions of Deep East Texas and Northcentral Louisiana. As a result, warm, moist, and unstable air began to build north along and south of the front, as steepening lapse rates aloft spread east along the axis of increasing large scale forcing ahead of the low. This resulted in an increase in scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms near and south of the warm front from the late evening hours of the 24th through the early morning hours of the 25th across East Texas and North Louisiana. Coupled with the strong wind shear present across the expanding warm sector, several supercell thunderstorms developed, with one supercell spawning six separate tornadoes from San Augustine Texas northeast to Eastern Union Parish Louisiana, directly impacting the cities of San Augustine Texas and Ruston Louisiana along its 150+ mile track across the NWS Shreveport County Warning Area. In fact, this supercell spawned another tornado across Northwest Morehouse and Southern Ashley County Arkansas, to complete its nearly 180 mile track before dissipating. Additional showers and thunderstorms developed farther north of the warm front along the I-20 corridor of East Texas, with locally heavy rainfall of 3-6+ inches resulting in areas of flash flooding across Southwest and Central Smith County.

An EF-2 tornado with maximum estimated winds of 130 mph first touched down along County Road 1277 where it uprooted and snapped numerous trees as it paralleled the road. It then widened and moved across Cedar Road where extensive tree damage led to structural damage to 54 structures in a neighborhood. As it continued, it ripped the awning off of a gas station and snapped the electrical transmission tower of a sub-station near the intersection of Highway 96 and Highway 21. A laundromat and several additional structures saw extensive damage as the tornado moved across the northern side of Downtown San Augustine. After tearing through the northern part of the city, it continued to uproot and snap trees nearby along County Road 353 before lifting just prior to the Shelby County line. ||Initial assessments found that around 150 homes and about 10 businesses were damaged from this tornado across San Augustine County.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

12 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 04:01 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:30 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, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:53 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.

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 104 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:11 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 2019 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.