Unrated tornado, Paducah, Texas, March 22, 2021

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

March 22, 2021

Touchdown

7:44 PM CDT (00:44 UTC)

Path length

0.0 miles (0.0 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Cottle County

Touchdown point

33.962, -100.300

Lift-off point

33.962, -100.300

Record number

2103221844-01

A strong upper level storm system brought both severe weather and a haboob with strong winds to the region. This storm system moved eastward over central New Mexico on the afternoon of the 22nd bringing very strong lift overhead. The lift encountered better moisture over the central South Plains bringing scattered showers and thunderstorms. Many locations received hail with the largest reported hail in Crosbyton (Crosby County) of quarter size. Scattered thunderstorms intensified into a line as they moved eastward during the afternoon hours also bringing severe wind gusts. Additional showers and thunderstorms developed underneath the center of the low in eastern New Mexico in the afternoon. Very dry surface air was present in eastern New Mexico which helped generate an intense outflow that raced from southeastern New Mexico across the southern South Plains and southern Rolling Plains. Wind gusts in excess of 70 mph lofted copious amounts of blowing dust and generated a haboob. The wall of dust dropped the visibility to near zero as it moved through. ||High wind gusts from the Texas Tech University West Texas mesonet follow:||77 mph at Plains (Yoakum County),|76 mph at Slaton (Lubbock County), and Graham (Garza County),|74 mph at Sundown (Cochran County),|73 mph at Denver City (Yoakum County), and Brownfield (Terry County),|67 mph at Wolfforth (Lubbock County),|65 mph at Levelland (Hockley County),|61 mph at O'Donnell (Lynn County),|60 mph at Post (Garza County),|59 mph at New Home and Tahoka (Lynn County), and White River Lake (Crosby County).

A trained spotter recorded a video of a brief tornado south of Paducah along the leading edge of a thunderstorm.

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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:30 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.

Childress Municipal (CDS), 52 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Altus AFB radar (KFDR), 130 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:45 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 2021 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

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.