EF1 tornado, Pauls Store, Texas, May 2, 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 2, 2019

Touchdown

6:30 AM CDT (11:30 UTC)

Lifted

6:31 AM CDT (11:31 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

118 yards (108 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

Shelby County

Touchdown point

31.853, -93.951

Lift-off point

31.861, -93.948

Record number

1905020530-01

22 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 105 mph.

• numerous trees snapped and uprooted
• small farm outbuilding destroyed
• numerous large limbs down and a few trees uprooted
• several pine trees uprooted

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

A deep southerly flow increased across much of the Ark-La-Tex during the daytime hours of April 30th through May 1st, ahead of a slow moving upper level trough that drifted east into the Southern Plains from the Four Corners Region. A complex of showers and thunderstorms that developed over Western and Central Oklahoma during the evening of April 30th ahead of a stalled surface frontal boundary sent a cold pool southeast into portions of extreme Northeast Texas and Southwest Arkansas which eventually stalled out during the early morning hours on May 1st. Weak upper level disturbances in the southwest flow aloft ahead of the approaching trough triggered additional showers and thunderstorms across Northcentral Texas, which spread east northeast across East Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and North Louisiana during the evening hours of the 1st, and continued throughout the morning hours of the 2nd. The earlier stalled boundary over Northeast Texas and Southwest Arkansas helped to enhance the showers and thunderstorms, and coupled with the instability and deep moisture in place, some of the showers and thunderstorm became severe, producing large hail, damaging winds, and locally heavy rainfall. An isolated tornado even touched down across Eastern Shelby County Texas just prior to daybreak on the 2nd. Where the storms moved repeatedly over the same areas, flash flooding was observed with several roads flooded and closed across portions of East Texas. ||While the storms diminished shortly after daybreak on the 2nd, another complex of showers and thunderstorms developed during the late afternoon through the evening hours in Central and Southeast Texas ahead of another shortwave trough, with a portion of this complex migrating into Deep East Texas by mid-evening. Given the moderate instability in place across this area due to strong daytime heating, some of these storms also became severe, with damaging winds downing trees and destroying a chicken house in Northern Nacogdoches County before weakening by late evening.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum estimated winds between 90-95 mph touched down in a pasture just south of County Road 3376, snapping and uprooting numerous trees and damaging a small farm outbuilding. The tornado continued northeast and snapped several more trees near a home but did not damage the home. The tornado then crossed County Road 3376 snapping and uprooting more trees before causing some minor roof damage to a chicken house on Farm to Market Road 139, lifting just northeast of the roadway.

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.

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 06:02 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), 67 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 11:30 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

15 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.