EF1 tornado, Bagwell to Cherry, Texas, March 30, 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 30, 2022

Touchdown

6:25 AM CDT (11:25 UTC)

Lifted

6:29 AM CDT (11:29 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

3.0 miles (4.9 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$25,000

County

Red River County

Touchdown point

33.649, -95.156

Lift-off point

33.679, -95.118

Record number

2203300525-01

22 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS SHV, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 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 pressure system entered the Four Corners Region on March 29th, before opening up into a trough which lifted through the Southern Rockies during the evening through the early morning hours of the 30th. A very strong southerly low level jet developed during the afternoon and evening of the 29th over the Southern Plains ahead of this ejecting trough, with large scale forcing along and east of the West Texas dryline contributing to the development of scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms, which marched east into East Texas during the early morning hours of the 30th. Enough instability lingered over portions of East Texas during the early morning hours which resulted in an scattered severe thunderstorms producing damaging winds which downed trees and damaged some homes. Even two isolated tornadoes were spawned from these storms over Red River and Sabine Counties. These storms eventually exited East Texas into North Louisiana by the mid-morning hours as they intensified in response to increased diurnal heating and instability.

An EF-1 tornado, with estimated maximum winds near 95 mph, touched down off of FM 2573 just southeast of the Bagwell community. There, it ripped metal panels off of a barn and topped a softwood tree. Metal pieces of the barn and tree branches were thrown as far as 300 yards. The tornado continued to down trees along two properties just off of County Road 2110. Another barn's roof was damaged and shingle damage was observed to a single family home before it crossed County Road 2110. The tornado downed a few more trees north of County Road 2110 before lifting north of the roadway. It is estimated that around 20 hardwood and softwood trees were downed from this tornado.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 10:30 UTC and running to 13:44 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 05:54 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), 181 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 11:26 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

80 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 81 of them

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.