EF1 tornado, Giddings Lee Co Arpt to Giddings, Texas, March 21, 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 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

March 21, 2022

Touchdown

7:28 PM CDT (00:28 UTC)

Lifted

7:32 PM CDT (00:32 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.5 miles (4.0 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lee County

Touchdown point

30.154, -96.955

Lift-off point

30.174, -96.922

Record number

2203211828-01

9 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS EWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

• Cross on church steeple bent over.

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

A warm front brought a warm, moist airmass over South Central Texas early in the day. A dryline moved into this area from the west and generated thunderstorms. Some of these storms produced tornadoes, large hail, and damaging wind gusts.

The supercell thunderstorm that produced this tornado had already produced a tornado earlier in the day near Kingsbury in Guadalupe County. After that tornado dissipated the storm moved northeastward through Bastrop County into southwestern Lee County. The tornado developed southwest of Giddings just west of FM448 along Private |Road 4481. Part of the metal roof of a barn was blown off. The storm continued northeastward and tore a hole in the roof of another metal building on the west side of FM448 and then crossed the road. As it crossed the Giddings city limit it damaged the roofs of two more metal buildings. One had minor damage with a small panel peeled up. The other had an approximately 10 foot by 20 foot section peeled off. In this|same area a small wooden shed had its roof torn off. The storm turned slightly to the east crossing Hwy 77 and blew down a fence at a house on Whispering Oaks Dr. The last of the damage was on Sunrise Ave. where the cross on the steeple of the First Baptist Church Giddings was bent and across the street some small tree branches were broken off. The worst damage was rated EF-1 with maximum winds of 95 mph. The maximum path width was 50 yards.

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

31 minutes of warning. NWS EWX issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:57 UTC, 31 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:14 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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 Ft Hood radar (KGRK), 75 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:34 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

35 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.