EF0 tornado, Wellington, Texas, May 20, 2019

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

May 20, 2019

Touchdown

3:29 PM CDT (20:29 UTC)

Lifted

3:30 PM CDT (20:30 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.6 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Collingsworth County

Touchdown point

34.786, -100.285

Lift-off point

34.791, -100.285

Record number

1905201429-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS AMA, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 65 mph.

• Grass flattened in area as well. hail or wind damage?

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

A vigorous upper level storm system followed a favorable track for Panhandles severe thunderstorms as it crossed southern Nevada and moved east into the Desert Southwest. A frontal boundary in the area and the storm system led to significant wind shear and instability across the area. This led to two rounds of severe weather occurred across the Texas Panhandle on the 20th. A combination of supercell storms and small thunderstorm line segments developed and moved across the northern Texas Panhandles. These storms produced wind damage, hail up to tennis ball size and flooding through the morning hours. The storms helped enhanced a cold front positioned across the area causing it to shift south focusing the strongest storms across the southeastern portions of the area for the afternoon.||After a brief lull in activity, an upper level disturbance back to the west of the Panhandles coupled with daytime heating south of a cold front, moderate and an abundant moisture provided a favorable environment for additional supercell thunderstorm development across areas that previously did not see storms earlier in the morning (the southeast TX Panhandle). With high amounts of instability during the afternoon, very large hail up to 5.5 in diameter was reported along with a tornado southwest of Wellington, TX. Supercells eventually moved east of the Panhandles during the evening of the 20th.

NWS damage survey information suggests that a tornado touchdown occurred at 0329 pm CDT 6 miles southwest of Wellington, lasting only 1 minute. Small tree limbs were broken as a result, with time estimated from radar.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS AMA issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:26 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:41 UTC and running to 00:11 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 High Risk, with a 0.45 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 20:02 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 Altus AFB radar (KFDR), 129 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:27 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

38 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.