Unrated tornado, Wright Patman Lake to Redwater, Texas, May 16, 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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 16, 2020

Touchdown

3:37 PM CDT (20:37 UTC)

Lifted

3:39 PM CDT (20:39 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

2.6 miles (4.2 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Cass and Bowie counties

Touchdown point

33.278, -94.186

Lift-off point

33.311, -94.210

Record number

2005161437-01

6 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 95 mph.

• A waterspout was captured on video by a game warden and remained over water.

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

A slow moving upper level low pressure system drifted east across Central and Eastern Texas during the daytime hours of May 16th. Meanwhile, the attendant surface low pressure system over East Central Texas drifted east into Northeast Texas during the afternoon, with a southerly low level jet allowing for a warm front to mix north into East Texas, extreme Northern Louisiana, into Southern Arkansas through the evening. Although daytime heating was limited due to extensive cloud cover and periods of showers, large scale forcing and adequate low level wind shear contributed to the development of numerous low-topped supercell showers and a few thunderstorms, several of which spawned tornadoes and wall clouds across portions of extreme Northeast Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Southeast Oklahoma throughout the afternoon and evening. As drier air began to entrain ahead of this upper low pressure system, and the warm front had shifted north into the northern sections of Southwest Arkansas by mid-evening, the tornado threat subsided considerably.

A waterspout was documented by video by a game warden on Lake Wright Patman in extreme Northern Cass County. This waterspout then moved northwest into extreme Southern Bowie County across the lake. This waterspout was rated an EF-Unknown due to the lack of damage indicators on the lake.

This is the continuation of the EF-Unknown tornado (waterspout) on Lake Wright Patman from extreme Northern Cass County. This waterspout was documented on video by a game warden moving northwest across the lake, before lifting prior to reaching the land areas. Due to the lack of damage indicators on the lake, this waterspout was rated as EF-Unknown, with a total path length across Cass and Bowie Counties of 2.63 miles.

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

29 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:08 UTC, 29 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:27 UTC and running to 02:00 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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), 100 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:38 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

12 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.