EF2 tornado, El Dorado Muni Arpt, Texas, May 18, 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

May 18, 2019

Touchdown

2:05 AM CDT (07:05 UTC)

Lifted

2:13 AM CDT (07:13 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

2.1 miles (3.3 km)

Path width

250 yards (229 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$500,000

County

Schleicher County

Touchdown point

31.038, -100.593

Lift-off point

31.067, -100.604

Record number

1905180105-01

14 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SJT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 132 mph.

• Metal roof material was strewn across the field as far as the eye could see.
• This tornado snapped trunks, uprooted trees and blew in a garage door of a residence.
• This point is based off of talking to residents who said the tornado went between their two properties. We also used radar data to get an approximation. The tornado broke tree limbs.

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

A highly sheared environment coupled with a very unstable airmass resulted in the development of strong tornadoes during the early morning hours of May 18. At least seven of the eight tornadoes damaged or destroyed several hundred homes across portions of West Central Texas. One of the supercells produced four long track strong tornadoes.

This tornado touched down in northern Schleicher County and took the roof completely off a home made out of stone. The tornado snapped trunks, scattered debris for a considerable distance. The tornado also moved a vehicle and wedged vinyl in between the rim and the rubber of a tire.

The deaths

0 direct deaths are recorded for this tornado, each with what Storm Data knows of it.

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.

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 05:55 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.

San Angelo/Mathis (SJT), 35 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The San Angelo radar (KSJT), 37 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 07:05 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

24 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.