EF3 Salado tornado, Texas, April 12, 2022

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF3

Date

April 12, 2022

Touchdown

5:29 PM CDT (22:29 UTC)

Lifted

6:06 PM CDT (23:06 UTC)

On the ground

37 minutes

Path length

16.6 miles (26.6 km)

Path width

770 yards (704 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

23

Property damage

$100,000

Counties

Williamson and Bell counties

Touchdown point

30.885, -97.788

Lift-off point

31.017, -97.624

Record number

2204121629-01

29 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS EWX and NWS FWD, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 165 mph.

• Large oak uprooted. Many other trees damaged.
• Family sheltered in an underground tornado shelter. Large trees snapped and uprooted.
• Trees were downed facing south, showing convergent winds toward the tornado path.
• Track was north of the residence, evidence of convergent wind blowing north into the path.

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

Thunderstorms developed along a dryline across the Big Country the afternoon of Tuesday April 12, then spread east across North and Central Texas, producing all modes of severe weather. Extremely large hail occurred over parts of our Central Texas counties, where a record-breaking hailstone over 5.6 inches in length was documented in the Salado area of Bell County. This hailstone is now the largest recorded hailstone in our CWA to date. Two tornadoes also occurred across Central Texas in Bell County. An EF-3 tornado started in Williamson County and moved northeast and then northerly across the Salado area. Twenty-three people were injured but no fatalities occurred. Additional storms developed overnight into Wednesday as a cold front pushed through the area, some of which also became severe.

This tornado began in northern Williamson County and additional information about the beginning of this tornado track can be found from the NWS Austin/San Antonio office.||Video evidence taken on the ground during the tornadic event, and areal footage of the damage track show the parent circulation produced at least 3 small, brief tornadoes while the storm circulation was near and east of the county line. Scattered damage points and small paths are making it difficult to determine which areas may have been impacted by each of these smaller tornadoes before the parent tornado formed. Therefore, in the area just east of the Williamson/Bell County line, the damage extent of the tornadic track has been widened to include all the known damage points (all EF-0s or EF-1s). In this case, since it is too difficult to discern the smaller tracks, and because they all formed from the same parent circulation within a short amount of time of each other, they will all be considered one tornado. The maximum width listed will remain the maximum width of the parent tornado (the EF-3 tornado).||The tornado, which began in northern Williamson County, entered extreme southern Bell County north of the junction between Bell County Road 231 and FM 2843. In this area there was a narrow swath of tree damage consistent with EF-0 intensity wind speeds, with some damage to outbuildings as well. The tornado moved east-northeast and intersected FM 2843, where the damage to trees and structures became much more significant. At least 15-20 damaged homes were visible to the survey team on both sides of FM 2843, with the most significant damage concentrated near the junction of FM 2843 and Buttermilk Road. In this vicinity, at least 10 structures suffered EF-2 to EF-3 intensity damage, with a small cluster of homes experiencing estimated peak tornado wind speeds of 150 to 165 mph. These structures had all or most of their roofs removed, and some of them had one or more exterior walls collapsed. Two churches along FM 2843 in the vicinity of Buttermilk Road were seriously damaged, with roofing material removed and multiple walls collapsed. Numerous vehicles in the area had significant damage consistent with being rolled or having flying projectiles thrown into them. Many hardwood trees along the FM 2843 corridor in the tornado path were uprooted or snapped, and many power poles were also snapped.||Beyond Buttermilk Road, the tornado continued traveling east-northeastward another 1.5 miles along FM 2843, then began a sharp turn to the northeast and eventually a northerly direction. Aerial footage allowed us to track the damage through inaccessible areas where notable tree damage, damage to homes and barns was observed along the path of the tornado.||The tornado reached Crows Ranch Rd and damaged aluminum panels of the roof of a home and blew in the panel garage door. It continued over a ridge line, then intensified again shortly before crossing FM 2484. It uprooted many large trees, shifted a large barn's walls, lifted roof panels off a shed, and caused significant damage to a residence. The residence's roof was almost entirely removed from the structure, and a section of the south facing wall was blown in. The east facing wall was completely blown out, all consistent with a high-end EF2 rating in this location. The tornado then continued northwest into the South Shore neighborhood, and then into Union Grove Park where it lifted shortly after moving onto Stillhouse Hollow Lake.

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

7 minutes of warning. NWS EWX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:22 UTC, 7 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:11 UTC and running to 00:42 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:50 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.

Killeen Municipal (Awos) (ILE), 15 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Ft Hood radar (KGRK), 40 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:27 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 2022 tornado in TexasEvery tornado in Texas since 1950Warnings in force in Texas nowThe forecast where you are

27 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.