EF1 tornado, Bascom, 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 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

May 18, 2019

Touchdown

5:45 PM CDT (22:45 UTC)

Lifted

5:48 PM CDT (22:48 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.2 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Smith County

Touchdown point

32.312, -95.209

Lift-off point

32.322, -95.204

Record number

1905181645-01

18 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 104 mph.

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

A shortwave trough entered the Southern Plains during the morning hours of May 18th, and began to take on a negative tilt as it approached East Texas during the afternoon and evening. Meanwhile, an associated cold front began to shift southeast across Central Oklahoma and portions of North Texas, with the dry line having mixed east ahead of the front into Central Texas. Warm, moist, and unstable air surged north across the warm sector of Northern and Eastern Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, Southwest Arkansas, and North Louisiana, with large scale forcing spreading east across this area ahead of the trough such that numerous severe thunderstorms with damaging winds developed across East Texas. An isolated tornado also touched down just southeast of Tyler with one supercell thunderstorm. These storms began to move repeatedly over the same areas during the evening, with instances of flash flooding reported as well. These storms eventually spread into portions of North Louisiana during the early morning hours of the 19th.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum estimated winds around 90 mph touched down along Caleb Trail and Midway Drive where it uprooted and snapped branches on trees. Trees fell on a car and homes along the road and shingles were removed off of a single family home. As the tornado approached Highway 64, portions of the roof were removed off of two metal outbuildings, and a sign was damaged at the Dairy Queen. After the tornado tossed metal across Highway 64, it continued along Morris Road where it uprooted several more trees and snapped additional large branches before lifting.

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

22 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:23 UTC, 22 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:51 UTC and running to 01:00 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 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 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.

The Shreveport radar (KSHV), 129 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:43 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.