EF2 tornado, Circle to Sacul, Texas, March 27, 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

March 27, 2021

Touchdown

6:06 PM CDT (23:06 UTC)

Lifted

6:38 PM CDT (23:38 UTC)

On the ground

32 minutes

Path length

20.5 miles (33.0 km)

Path width

500 yards (457 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$75,000

Counties

Cherokee and Nacogdoches counties

Touchdown point

31.688, -95.229

Lift-off point

31.833, -94.924

Record number

2103271706-01

53 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 120 mph.

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

A longwave trough shifted east out of the Rockies and into the Central and Southern Plains during the day on March 27th, with the southwest flow ahead of the trough ejecting a series of upper level disturbances northeast across Northeast Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Northwest Louisiana during the afternoon and evening. Meanwhile, a broad warm and moist sector had spread north across all of the Ark-La-Tex into Eastern Oklahoma and much of Arkansas ahead of this trough, with temperatures warming into the upper 70s and lower 80s areawide. This resulted in moderate instability developing as large scale forcing increased during the late afternoon through the evening hours, resulting in scattered to numerous shower and thunderstorm development across much of these areas. Increasing wind shear late in the afternoon also promoted the development of scattered severe thunderstorms over East Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Northwest Louisiana, with various reports of damaging winds and large hail received. However, one lone supercell developed over Eastern Anderson County Texas, which produced multiple tornadoes along its track from Cherokee County northeast into Northwest Nacogdoches, Southern Rusk, and Southern Panola Counties, before eventually moving into Northern Desoto and Southeast Caddo Parishes in Northwest Louisiana. These storms eventually organized along a broken line as it pushed into North Louisiana, ahead of a cold front that shifted southeast into the area during the early morning hours of the 28th.

An EF2 tornado with estimated maximum winds near 120 mph touched down just southwest of Russell Cemetery off of FM 23 south-southwest of the city of Rusk in Cherokee County. The tornado tracked northeast where it crossed Highway 69 with intermittent damage along County Road 1101. The tornado crossed FM 343 and intensified and widened significantly to approximately 500 yards, where several hundred trees were snapped continuously along County Road 1211 and County Road 1209. The tornado then weakened and produced more intermittent damage as it crossed over into extreme Northwest Nacogdoches County just west of the Sacul community.

This is a continuation of the Cherokee County tornado. This tornado had weakened to an EF1 as it crossed over into extreme Northwest Nacogdoches County just west of the Sacul community, with estimated maximum winds around 95 mph. The tornado crossed Highway 204, snapping and uprooting several trees, before lifting in a wooded area west of County Road 991 just northwest of the Sacul community.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:03 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:25 UTC and running to 06:00 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:55 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), 139 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:06 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

18 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.