EF2 tornado, Mings Chapel to Ofarrell, 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 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 21, 2022

Touchdown

10:20 PM CDT (03:20 UTC)

Lifted

11:08 PM CDT (04:08 UTC)

On the ground

48 minutes

Path length

40.0 miles (64.3 km)

Path width

700 yards (640 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

8

Property damage

$2.6 million

Counties

Upshur, Morris, Marion and Cass counties

Touchdown point

32.643, -94.966

Lift-off point

33.013, -94.439

Record number

2203212120-01

85 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 134 mph.

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

A closed upper low emerged out of the Rockies and into the Central Plains during the afternoon and evening hours of March 21st, with the attendant upper trough swinging east through Central Texas and Oklahoma. Strong southerly low level winds allowed for the rapid return of warm, moist, and unstable north behind a warm front which lifted north through East Texas and North Louisiana. Large scale forcing began to increase across Northern and Central Texas during the evening, with showers and thunderstorms becoming numerous across this area which spread into East Texas and North Louisiana during the late evening through the early morning hours of the 22nd. Given the extent of forcing within the unstable air mass in place, severe thunderstorms developed over North-central Texas and spread into East Texas, resulting in numerous reports of damaging winds, large hail, and even isolated tornadoes. Redevelopment of these storms continued overnight as well over the same areas of East Texas and Northwest Louisiana, which resulted in instances of flash flooding as well, as widespread rainfall amounts of 3-6 inches fell over these areas. These storms diminished during the early morning hours of the 22nd with the passage of a cold front through the region.

An EF-2 tornado touched down off of FM 2685 and Pomegranate Road where it began to sporadically uproot hardwood and softwood trees. The tornado began to intensify and develop a widespread damage swath of uprooted and snapped trees as it approached Highway 271 several miles south of Gilmer. Prior to reaching Highway 271, the tornado ripped the roof off of a single family home and tore down a wall of the home. As the tornado continued on, it reached its maximum width of 700 yards or 0.4 miles as it crossed Highway 700. The tornado intensified further as it crossed Azalea Road and Highway 154. Just before reaching this road, the tornado hit a two-story single family home, removing the home's second floor and tearing down a front exterior wall. This led to the tornado's estimated maximum wind speed of 135 mph, the strongest EF-2 rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. A nearby mobile home was also destroyed, with an occupant injured. ||The tornado continued to track northeast and ripped off a roof of a single family home, and completely destroyed one double-wide and multiple single-wide manufactured homes. The tornado also led to structural damage to several two-story family homes with portions of the roofs removed and a projectile leading to a large hole in the side of a home. A guest house that had a frame nailed into the ground was wiped clean from its foundation with its occupant hospitalized. ||As the tornado continued to track northeast, it led to more structural damage to single family homes and complete destruction to manufactured homes between Gilmer and Ore City. On at least three occasions, manufactured homes had residents inside of them when they were picked up and thrown by the tornado. Additional widespread tree and roof damage to homes continued as the tornado approached Lake O' the Pines. Before crossing the lake into Western Marion County, the tornado ripped the roof off of the Lake O' the Pines Bait Shop before throwing multiple RV's and a motor home into the lake. Four occupants in these RV's were injured but were rescued from the lake.

This is a continuation of the Upshur County EF-2 tornado. This tornado, which had weakened to an EF-1 with estimated maximum winds near 110 mph as it entered far Western Marion County, continued to track northeast across Jordan Drive and FM 729. The tornado damaged the roof of a home on Jordan Drive, with a metal building structure for storage of vehicles having two walls and its roof removed, lifting pillars and throwing them several hundred feet. Widespread tree damage was observed with hundreds of snapped trees. Off of FM 729, a manufactured home was picked up and rolled with an occupant in it. She suffered injuries and walked nearly a half mile to FM 729 to get to help. The tornado also significantly damaged or destroyed manufactured homes along Nash Farm Road. Winds from this tornado also caused three wooden power poles to lean significantly off of Morris County Cutoff Road, before the tornado crossed over into extreme Southeast Morris County.

This is a continuation of the Upshur/Marion County EF-2 tornado. This tornado, which remained an EF-1 with estimated maximum winds near 110 mph from far Western Marion County, snapped numerous trees in far Southeast Morris County along and east of Morris County Cutoff Road/County Road 2307, before entering Southwestern Cass County.

This is a continuation of the Upshur/Western Marion/Southeast Morris County EF-2 tornado. This tornado, which maintained an EF-1 rating with estimated maximum winds around 105 mph, continued to uproot and snap trees and Southwest and Central Cass County with damage becoming more sporadic and narrow as it tracked northeast across FM 161, County Road 1599, Highway 49, County Road 1577, Highway 11, before finally lifting just east of Highway 130. The most significant damage occurred off of Highway 11 where a metal roof of a home was damaged. The total path length of this tornado which originated in Central Upshur County was 40.15 miles.

An EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds around 90 mph embedded within a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) briefly touched down and uprooted approximately 10 hardwood and softwood trees along Highway 77 just southeast of Douglassville. The tornado lifted north of Highway 77 and east of FM 2791.

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

21 minutes of warning. NWS SHV issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:59 UTC, 21 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 03:28 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 01:10 UTC and running to 06:35 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:52 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), 91 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 03:20 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.