EF1 tornado, Melvin to Pear Vly, Texas, April 12, 2020

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

April 12, 2020

Touchdown

4:05 AM CDT (09:05 UTC)

Lifted

4:13 AM CDT (09:13 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

5.1 miles (8.2 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

McCulloch County

Touchdown point

31.215, -99.585

Lift-off point

31.256, -99.513

Record number

2004120305-01

41 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SJT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 108 mph.

• These were feeders that were lofted several hundred yards.

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

A strong upper level disturbance interacted with an increasingly unstable airmass to produce supercell thunderstorms. These supercell thunderstorms resulted in many reports of large hail and damaging winds on April 11. ||A couple of long track supercells spawned at least two tornadoes shortly after midnight on Easter Sunday April 12. One twister tracked near Melvin and stayed over ranch land, while another tornado tracked south of Ozona and also remained mostly over ranch land. At the beginning of it's life cycle, the tornado in Crockett County struck a residence and resulted in EF-0 damage.

An EF-1 Tornado touched down near Highway 87 about a mile north of Melvin and continued northeast. It mostly uprooted large Oak Trees or snapped their trunks. It killed a calf and destroyed several |deer feeders. The tornado overturned a truck and cattle feeder. It damaged the large doors on a barn. In addition, it knocked over a fence. Special thanks to ranchers who assisted with this damage survey.

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

15 minutes of warning. NWS SJT issued a tornado warning for this county at 08:50 UTC, 15 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 09:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 07:00 UTC and running to 11:28 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. 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 San Angelo radar (KSJT), 91 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 09:05 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 2020 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

72 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 73 of them

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.